| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: and penetrated to Scandinavia and England, down through the hordes
of Attila and Tamerlane, to the present immigration of Chinese and
Japanese that threatens America. The Phoenicians and the Greeks,
with unremembered drifts behind them, colonised the Mediterranean.
Rome was engulfed in the torrent of Germanic tribes drifting down
from the north before a flood of drifting Asiatics. The Angles,
Saxons, and Jutes, after having drifted whence no man knows,
poured into Britain, and the English have carried this drift on
around the world. Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and
voracious, the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar
regions, the Pigmy to the fever-rotten jungles of Africa. And in
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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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: Brrr! Why, you are a relic of the golden age! We see the old
mother here, in this avenue, every day; why, her face, her
appearance, tell everything. What, have you not known her for
what she is by the way she holds her bag?"
The two friends walked up and down for some time, and several
young men who knew Souchet or Schinner joined them. The painter's
adventure, which the sculptor regarded as unimportant, was
repeated by him.
"So he, too, has seen that young lady!" said Souchet.
And then there were comments, laughter, innocent mockery, full of
the liveliness familiar to artists, but which pained Hippolyte
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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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: head. Before I could stop him -we were hiding in the bakehouse -
he'd whipped up a storm of wildfire, with flashlights and voices,
which sent the folk shrieking into the garden, and a girl overset a
hive there, and - of course he didn't know till then such things
could touch him - he got badly stung, and came home with his
face looking like kidney potatoes!
'You can imagine how angry Sir Huon and Lady Esclairmonde
were with poor Robin! They said the Boy was never to be trusted
with me night-walking any more - and he took about as much
notice of their order as he did of the bee-stings. Night after night,
as soon as it was dark, I'd pick up his whistle in the wet fern, and
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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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: strong among the peoples of earth, is rotten and honeycombed with the
tyranny of gold! We who had hoped to stand first in the Anglo-Saxon
sisterhood for justice and freedom, are not even fit to stand last. Do I
not know only too bitterly how weak is my voice; and that that which I can
do is as nothing: but shall I remain silent? Shall the glow-worm refuse
to give its light, because it is not a star set up on high; shall the
broken stick refuse to burn and warm one frozen man's hands, because it is
not a beacon-light flaming across the earth? Ever a voice is behind my
shoulder, that whispers to me--'Why break your head against a stone wall?
Leave this work to the greater and larger men of your people; they who will
do it better than you can do it! Why break your heart when life could be
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