| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: FEAR not, dear friend, but freely live your days
Though lesser lives should suffer. Such am I,
A lesser life, that what is his of sky
Gladly would give for you, and what of praise.
Step, without trouble, down the sunlit ways.
We that have touched your raiment, are made whole
From all the selfish cankers of man's soul,
And we would see you happy, dear, or die.
Therefore be brave, and therefore, dear, be free;
Try all things resolutely, till the best,
Out of all lesser betters, you shall find;
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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 Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: draw rein until they reached London. Now you see how simple it all
is, citoyenne!"
"It does seem simple, doesn't it?" she said, with a final
bitter attempt at flippancy, "when you want to kill a chicken. . .you
take hold of it. . .then you wring its neck. . .it's only the chicken
who does not find it quite so simple. Now you hold a knife at my
throat, and a hostage for my obedience. . . . You find it
simple. . . . I don't."
"Nay, citoyenne, I offer you a chance of saving the brother
you love from the consequences of his own folly."
Marguerite's face softened, her eyes at last grew moist, as
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: the other girls. It was enough to hear their lament. So she
turned her horse into Stewart's trail.
Rain fell steadily. The fury of the storm, however, had passed,
and the roll of thunder diminished in volume. The air had
wonderfully cleared and was growing cool. Madeline began to feel
uncomfortably cold and wet. Stewart was climbing faster than
formerly, and she noted that Monty kept at her heels, pressing
her on. Time had been lost, and the camp-site was a long way
off. The stag-hounds began to lag and get footsore. The sharp
rocks of the trail were cruel to their feet. Then, as Madeline
began to tire, she noticed less and less around her. The ascent
The Light of Western Stars |
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 The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: for want of a better name, we are wont to call "fatality," that drew
him to Mme. de Beauseant.
The figure of the Vicomtesse de Beauseant rose up suddenly before him
with gracious thronging associations. She was a new world for him, a
world of fears and hopes, a world to fight for and to conquer.
Inevitably he felt the contrast between this vision and the human
beings in the shabby room; and then, in truth, she was a woman; what
woman had he seen so far in this dull, little world, where calculation
replaced thought and feeling, where courtesy was a cut-and-dried
formality, and ideas of the very simplest were too alarming to be
received or to pass current? The sound of Mme. de Beauseant's name
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