| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: With roses then the sepulcher he strow'd
And thus his father's ghost bespoke aloud:
"Hail, O ye holy manes! hail again,
Paternal ashes, now review'd in vain!
The gods permitted not, that you, with me,
Should reach the promis'd shores of Italy,
Or Tiber's flood, what flood soe'er it be."
Scarce had he finish'd, when, with speckled pride,
A serpent from the tomb began to glide;
His hugy bulk on sev'n high volumes roll'd;
Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly gold:
Aeneid |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: much diverted with the grimaces and contortions of his
victims; and at the same time you would fear to leave his arm
until his bottle was empty, knowing that, when once among the
crowd, you would run a good chance yourself of baptism with
his biting liquor. Now my companion's vitriol was
inexhaustible.
It was perhaps the consciousness of this, the knowledge that
I was being anointed already out of the vials of his wrath,
that made me fall to criticising the critic, whenever we had
parted.
After all, I thought, our satirist has just gone far enough
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: laughed, a low laugh, boyish and full of triumph.
"Ah!" he said. "So you DID hear! I'm going to say it again,
anyhow. I love you, Patty. I'm--I'm mad for you. I've loved
you hopelessly for so long that to-night, when there's a ray of
hope, I'm--I'm hardly sane. I--"
"Please!" she said.
"I love you so much that I waken at night just to say your
name, over and over, and when dawn comes through the windows--"
"You don't know what you are saying!" she said wildly. "I am--
still--"
"I welcome the daylight," he went on, talking very fast, "because
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: for," Captain Hagberd went on a little vacantly.
"Girls, of course, don't require so much--h'm--
h'm. They don't run away from home, my dear."
"No," said Miss Bessie, quietly.
Captain Hagberd, amongst the mounds of
turned-up earth, chuckled. With his maritime rig,
his weather-beaten face, his beard of Father Nep-
tune, he resembled a deposed sea-god who had ex-
changed the trident for the spade.
"And he must look upon you as already pro-
vided for, in a manner. That's the best of it with
To-morrow |
