| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: parted, the bulk of them returning westward in a troop, and only three,
Neil and two others, remaining sentries on the prisoner.
"I could name one who would be very ill pleased with your day's work,
Neil Duncanson," said I, when the rest had moved away.
He assured me in answer I should be tenderly used, for he knew he was
"acquent wi' the leddy."
This was all our talk, nor did any other son of man appear upon that
portion of the coast until the sun had gone down among the Highland
mountains, and the gloaming was beginning to grow dark. At which hour
I was aware of a long, lean, bony-like Lothian man of a very swarthy
countenance, that came towards us among the bents on a farm horse.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: user. The children, like the children of Plato's perfect city,
will grow up 'in a simple atmosphere of all fair things' - I quote
from the passage in the REPUBLIC - 'a simple atmosphere of all fair
things, where beauty, which is the spirit of art, will come on eye
and ear like a fresh breath of wind that brings health from a clear
upland, and insensibly and gradually draw the child's soul into
harmony with all knowledge and all wisdom, so that he will love
what is beautiful and good, and hate what is evil and ugly (for
they always go together) long before he knows the reason why; and
then when reason comes will kiss her on the cheek as a friend.'
That is what Plato thought decorative art could do for a nation,
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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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: but I don't want to sit and talk and use your time any longer. I
want to do something. I want to hammer myself against all this
that pens women in. I feel that I shall stifle unless I can do
something--and do something soon."
Part 4
It was not Ann Veronica's fault that the night's work should have
taken upon itself the forms of wild burlesque. She was in deadly
earnest in everything she did. It seemed to her the last
desperate attack upon the universe that would not let her live as
she desired to live, that penned her in and controlled her and
directed her and disapproved of her, the same invincible
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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 Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: had arrived with no other servant than a little girl of fourteen, a
dumb child, much attached to Miss Fanny, on whom she waited very
intelligently, and had settled, two winters since, with monsieur and
Madame Bergmann, the retired head-gardeners of His Excellency Count
Borromeo of Isola Bella and Isola Madre in the Lago Maggoire. These
Swiss, who were possessed of an income of about a thousand crowns a
year, had let the top story of their house to the Lovelaces for three
years, at a rent of two hundred francs a year. Old Lovelace, a man of
ninety, and much broken, was too poor to allow himself any
gratifications, and very rarely went out; his daughter worked to
maintain him, translating English books, and writing some herself, it
Albert Savarus |
