| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: they saw the same old boxes produced again.
And Paddy had said, "I had red ribbing on mine bee-fore!"
And Johnny had said, "It's always pink on mine. I hate pink."
But what was William to do? The affair wasn't so easily settled. In the
old days, of course, he would have taken a taxi off to a decent toyshop and
chosen them something in five minutes. But nowadays they had Russian toys,
French toys, Serbian toys--toys from God knows where. It was over a year
since Isabel had scrapped the old donkeys and engines and so on because
they were so "dreadfully sentimental" and "so appallingly bad for the
babies' sense of form."
"It's so important," the new Isabel had explained, "that they should like
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: they both became silent. With a common instinct they slackened their
pace, as if to lengthen the time of semi-privacy allowed them. To
Ralph, the pleasure of these last yards of the walk with Katharine was
so great that he could not look beyond the present moment to the time
when she should have left him. He had no wish to use the last moments
of their companionship in adding fresh words to what he had already
said. Since they had stopped talking, she had become to him not so
much a real person, as the very woman he dreamt of; but his solitary
dreams had never produced any such keenness of sensation as that which
he felt in her presence. He himself was also strangely transfigured.
He had complete mastery of all his faculties. For the first time he
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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 The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: All things proceed, in fire, air, earth, and water,
And all are subject to one law, which, broken
Even in a single point, is broken in all;
Demons rush in, and chaos comes again.
By this will I compel the stubborn spirits,
That guard the treasures, hid in caverns deep
On Gerizim, by Uzzi the High-Priest,
The ark and holy vessels, to reveal
Their secret unto me, and to restore
These precious things to the Samaritans.
A mist is rising from the plain below me,
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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 Daisy Miller by Henry James: were rarely at home, but when he found them, the devoted Giovanelli
was always present. Very often the brilliant little Roman was in the
drawing room with Daisy alone, Mrs. Miller being apparently constantly
of the opinion that discretion is the better part of surveillance.
Winterbourne noted, at first with surprise, that Daisy on these
occasions was never embarrassed or annoyed by his own entrance;
but he very presently began to feel that she had no more surprises for him;
the unexpected in her behavior was the only thing to expect. She showed
no displeasure at her tete-a-tete with Giovanelli being interrupted;
she could chatter as freshly and freely with two gentlemen as with one;
there was always, in her conversation, the same odd mixture of audacity
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