| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels. No excuse,
says you. None, sir, says I, and touches my 'at most civil
(extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite doomed - to resume - )
I have not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it is early on my
list; and when once I get to it, three weeks should see the last
bloodstain - maybe a fortnight. For I am beginning to combine an
extraordinary laborious slowness while at work, with the most
surprisingly quick results in the way of finished manuscripts. How
goes Gray? Colvin is to do Keats. My wife is still not well. -
Yours ever,
R. L. S.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: no human being can learn anything: a book which, though you may
decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense read, though the
enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of a book all the rest
of your life. With millions of acres of woods and valleys and hills
and wind and air and birds and streams and fishes and all sorts of
instructive and healthy things easily accessible, or with streets and
shop windows and crowds and vehicles and all sorts of city delights at
the door, you are forced to sit, not in a room with some human grace
and comfort or furniture and decoration, but in a stalled pound with a
lot of other children, beaten if you talk, beaten if you move, beaten
if you cannot prove by answering idiotic questions that even when you
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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 Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: seneschal had desired. But in this pursuit, Blanche gained an appetite
of nun and prelate, that is to say, wished to procreate, had her
desires whetted, and could scarcely restrain her hunger, when on her
return she gave play to her teeth. Now by reason of reading the
legends written by the way, and of separating by death the embraces of
birds and wild beasts, she discovered a mystery of natural alchemy,
while colouring her complexion, and superagitating her feeble
imagination, which did little to pacify her warlike nature, and
strongly tickled her desire which laughed, played, and frisked
unmistakably. The seneschal thought to disarm the rebellious virtue of
his wife by making her scour the country; but his fraud turned out
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: away, between Vouvray and Saint-Symphorien, you see a sort of crescent
of gray cliff full of sunny vineyards; the only limits to your view
are the low, rich hills along the Cher, a bluish line of horizon
broken by many a chateau and the wooded masses of many a park. Out to
the west you lose yourself in the immense river, where vessels come
and go, spreading their white sails to the winds which seldom fail
them in the wide Loire basin. A prince might build a summer palace at
La Grenadiere, but certainly it will always be the home of a poet's
desire, and the sweetest of retreats for two young lovers--for this
vintage house, which belongs to a substantial burgess of Tours, has
charms for every imagination, for the humblest and dullest as well as
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