| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: combat and brought back its gilded tusks, we cannot tell, and not
one of our modern anthropologists, for all their much-boasted
science, has had the ordinary courage to tell us. Whatever was his
name or race, he certainly was the true founder of social
intercourse. For the aim of the liar is simply to charm, to
delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilised
society, and without him a dinner-party, even at the mansions of
the great, is as dull as a lecture at the Royal Society, or a
debate at the Incorporated Authors, or one of Mr. Burnand's
farcical comedies.
'Nor will he be welcomed by society alone. Art, breaking from the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: tried to raise herself and found her leg was very painful. She
was not clear whether it was night or day nor where she was; she
made a second effort, wincing and groaning, and turned over and
got into a sitting position and looked about her.
Everything seemed very silent. She was, in fact, in the midst of
a vast uproar, but she did not realise this because her hearing
had been destroyed.
At first she could not join on what she saw to any previous
experience.
She seemed to be in a strange world, a soundless, ruinous world,
a world of heaped broken things. And it was lit--and somehow
The Last War: A World Set Free |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: "That's no good," said the Child, shaking them away. "Just stop crying
until I've finished this, baby, and I'll walk you up and down."
But by that time she had to peg out the washing for the Frau. A wind had
sprung up. Standing on tiptoe in the yard, she almost felt she would be
blown away. There was a bad smell coming from the ducks' coop, which was
half full of manure water, but away in the meadow she saw the grass blowing
like little green hairs. And she remembered having heard of a child who
had once played for a whole day in just such a meadow with real sausages
and beer for her dinner--and not a little bit of tiredness. Who had told
her that story? She could not remember, and yet it was so plain.
The wet clothes flapped in her face as she pegged them; danced and jigged
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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 Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: the famine, Henri IV., that factionist who became king, might never
perhaps have entered Paris.
Every one can now picture to himself the appearance of this corner of
old Paris, where the bridge and quai still are, where the trees of the
quai aux Fleurs now stand, but where no trace remains of the period of
which we write except the tall and famous tower of the Palais de
Justice, from which the signal was given for the Saint Bartholomew.
Strange circumstance! one of the houses standing at the foot of that
tower then surrounded by wooden shops, that, namely, of Lecamus, was
about to witness the birth of facts which were destined to prepare for
that night of massacre, which was, unhappily, more favorable than
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