| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: "Sonia--my heart!"
A bell tinkled.
The waiter came in and opened the piano. In the heated excitement of the
moment he entirely forgot what was fitting, and flicked the keys with the
grimy table napkin he carried over his arm. The Frau Oberlehrer tripped on
the platform followed by a very young gentleman, who blew his nose twice
before he hurled his handkerchief into the bosom of the piano.
"Yes, I know you have no love for me,
And no forget-me-not.
No love, no heart, and no forget-me-not."
sang the Frau Oberlehrer, in a voice that seemed to issue from her
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: strangers; they may skin me alive, if they please (and I am pretty well
skinned by them already), if only my skin is made at last, not like that of
Marsyas, into a leathern bottle, but into a piece of virtue. And here is
Dionysodorus fancying that I am angry with him, when really I am not angry
at all; I do but contradict him when I think that he is speaking improperly
to me: and you must not confound abuse and contradiction, O illustrious
Dionysodorus; for they are quite different things.
Contradiction! said Dionysodorus; why, there never was such a thing.
Certainly there is, he replied; there can be no question of that. Do you,
Dionysodorus, maintain that there is not?
You will never prove to me, he said, that you have heard any one
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