| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: flowers and fruit-trees all around it. There the travelling
companion stopped, and, drawing out a little pipe from under his
jacket, began playing so sweetly upon it that he made one's heart
stand still to listen to the music.
Well, he played and played until, by-and-by, the door opened, and
out came a serving-man. "Ho, piper!" said he, "would you like to
earn good wages for your playing?"
"Yes," said the travelling companion, "I would, for that is why I
came hither."
"Then follow me," said the servant, and thereupon the travelling
companion tucked away his pipe and entered, with the other at his
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: are so powerfully ridiculous, that neither kindness
nor duty can withstand them; they bear down love,
interest, and reverence, and force the friend, the
dependent, or the child, to give way to instantaneous
motions of merriment.
Among the principal of comick calamities, may
be reckoned the pain which an author, not yet
hardened into insensibility, feels at the onset of a
furious critick, whose age, rank, or fortune, gives him
confidence to speak without reserve; who heaps
one objection upon another, and obtrudes his remarks,
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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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: dismounted, all gestures and fripperies, all trophies of nuts and roses,
and shrunk so that not only fame kept even in that desolation a vigilance
which spared no phantom and luxuriated in no vision, and it was in this
guise that he inspired in William Bankes (intermittently) and in Charles
Tansley (obsequiously)and in his wife now, when she looked up and saw him
standing at the edge of the lawn, profoundly, reverence, and pity, and
gratitude too, as a stake driven into the bed of a channel upon which the
gulls perch and the waves beat inspires in merry boat-loads a feeling of
gratitude for the duty it is taking upon itself of marking the channel out
there in the floods alone.
"But the father of eight children has no choice." Muttering half aloud,
To the Lighthouse |
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 When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: "You are right. If it can be done. . .
must go."
Those days for
not altogether
He moved a step towards her, and she stepped back,
her white face struggled against him and resisted him.
"No," she gasped. "I cannot bear--. Go now."
He extended his hands stupidly. She clenched her
fists. "Go now," she cried. "Go now."
He hesitated and understood. He threw his hands
up in a queer half-theatrical gesture. He had no word
When the Sleeper Wakes |
