| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: where it was best to bathe.
After a while:
"Aren't you glad I made you come here?" said Daphne
triumphantly.
I sat up and stared at her sorrowfully.
"Well?" she said defiantly.
"You have taken my breath away," I said, "Kindly return it, and I
will deal with you and your interrogatories."
"I suppose you're going to say it was you- "
"It was. I did. I have. But for me you would not. You are.
I took the rooms. I drove the car nearly the whole way down. I
 The Brother of Daphne |
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 Cratylus by Plato: how we put words together, how we construct and connect sentences, what are
the rules of accent and rhythm in verse or prose, the formation and
composition of words, the laws of euphony and sound, the affinities of
letters, the mistakes to which we are ourselves most liable of spelling or
pronunciation. We may compare with our own language some other, even when
we have only a slight knowledge of it, such as French or German. Even a
little Latin will enable us to appreciate the grand difference between
ancient and modern European languages. In the child learning to speak we
may note the inherent strength of language, which like 'a mountain river'
is always forcing its way out. We may witness the delight in imitation and
repetition, and some of the laws by which sounds pass into one another. We
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