| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: Thy school-days frightful, desp'rate, wild, and furious;
Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous;
Thy age confirm'd, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody,
More mild, but yet more harmful-kind in hatred.
What comfortable hour canst thou name
That ever grac'd me with thy company?
KING RICHARD. Faith, none but Humphrey Hour, that call'd
your Grace
To breakfast once forth of my company.
If I be so disgracious in your eye,
Let me march on and not offend you, madam.
Richard III |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: cake that the little girls dropped, but you may be sure that they
did not drop so very many, many little brown crumbs for little brown
birds to find.
But if they were dropped, even if by rare chance were the crumbs so
large as to be nearly as large as half of a cake--why then, that
crumb had to stay for those little birds. It was the law! The law
that the little girls had made for themselves, and nobody but
themselves knew about that law--for the good of the birds. But no
little girl cared to disobey that law of their own that nobody but
themselves knew about, for if one had--how dreadful it would have
been--no little girl would have played with her until--oh, so long,
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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 When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: "Yes?"
"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In
your days men starved in your streets. That was bad.
But they died--men. These people in blue--. The
proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The
Company trades in their labour, and it has taken care
to assure itself of the supply. People come to
it starving and helpless--they eat and sleep for
a night and day, they -work for a day, and at the
end of the day they go out again. If they have worked
well they have a penny or so--enough for a
When the Sleeper Wakes |
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 In the Cage by Henry James: far the greater part only passed--a proportion but just appreciable
stayed. Most of the elements swam straight away, lost themselves
in the bottomless common, and by so doing really kept the page
clear. On the clearness therefore what she did retain stood
sharply out; she nipped and caught it, turned it over and interwove
it.
CHAPTER VI
She met Mrs. Jordan when she could, and learned from her more and
more how the great people, under her gentle shake and after going
through everything with the mere shops, were waking up to the gain
of putting into the hands of a person of real refinement the
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