| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: great in the scientific way.
We have struck up a great friendship with Miss Murray, the Queen's
Maid of Honor, who paid me a visit of three hours to-day, in the
midst of which came in Colonel Estcourt, whom I was delighted to
see, as you may suppose. Miss Murray is to me a very interesting
person, though a great talker; a convenient fault to a stranger.
She is connected with half the noble families in England, is the
grand-daughter of the Duchess of Athol, who governed the Isle of Man
as a queen, and the descendant of Scott's Countess of Derby. Though
sprung of such Tory blood, and a maid of honor, she thinks freely
upon all subjects. Religion, politics, and persons, she decides
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: fringe of the wood and the crown of the beach, there had been
designed a regular figure, like the court for some new variety of
tennis, with borders of round stones imbedded, and pointed at the
angles with low posts, likewise of stone. This was the king's Pray
Place. When he prayed, what he prayed for, and to whom he
addressed his supplications I could never learn. The ground was
tapu.
In the angle, by the mouth of the path, stood a deserted maniap'.
Near by there had been a house before our coming, which was now
transported and figured for the moment in Equator Town. It had
been, and it would be again when we departed, the residence of the
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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 Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: area of fifteen by twenty feet will serve as a home for an entire
family, which not only cooks but sleeps in the same room.'' Here, as
in Michigan among the beets, children are ``thick as bees.'' All kinds
of children pick, Miss Duke reports, ``even those as young as three
years! Five-year-old children pick steadily all day.... Many white
American children are among them--pure American stock, who have
gradually moved from the Carolinas, Tennessee, and other southern
states to Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and on into the Imperial
Valley.'' Some of these children, it seems, wanted to attend school,
but their fathers did not want to work; so the children were forced to
become bread-winners. One man whose children were working with him in
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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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: though no Saxon dared call him kingly in a Norman's hearing.
There can be but one King.
'"It serves," said Hugh. "But the day will be long and hot.
Better rest here. We go forward now."
'"No, I will keep with thee, my kinsman," he answered like a
child. He was indeed childish through great age.
'The line had not moved a bowshot when De Aquila's great
horn blew for a halt, and soon young Fulke - our false Fulke's son
- yes, the imp that lit the straw in Pevensey Castle [See 'Old Men
at Pevensey' in PUCK OF POOK'S HILL.] - came thundering up
a woodway.
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