| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: Soldiers". It showed a row of fat wine-skins, and our old
Doctor of the Hunno hospital snuffing at them. Each time
that Maximus had taken troops out of Britain to help him
to conquer Gaul, he used to send the garrisons more wine
- to keep them quiet, I suppose. On the Wall, we always
called a wine-skin a "Maximus". Oh, yes; and I had
drawn them in Imperial helmets.
"'Not long since," he went on, "men's names were
sent up to Caesar for smaller jokes than this."
"'True, Caesar," said Pertinax; "but you forget that
was before I, your friend's friend, became such a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: "He is dead," declared the brat with superb dignity, "he is in
the cemetery, is my papa."
A murmur of approval rose amid the scape-graces, as if the fact
of possessing a papa dead in a cemetery made their comrade big
enough to crush the other one who had no papa at all. And these
rogues, whose fathers were for the most part evil-doers,
drunkards, thieves, and ill-treaters of their wives hustled each
other as they pressed closer and closer to Simon as though they,
the legitimate ones, would stifle in their pressure one who was
beyond the law.
The lad next Simon suddenly put his tongue out at him with a
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: would fain see them taken advantage of to the full. Every variety
is here, from pale yellow to purple passing through orange, red,
and brown, entirely at your command; nearly every kind of green and
grey also is attainable, and with these and with pure white what
harmony might you not achieve. Of stained and variegated stone the
quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable. Were brighter
colours required, let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used
in mosaic, a kind of work as durable as the solid stone and
incapable of losing its lustre by time. And let the painter's work
be reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber.
'This is the true and faithful way of building. Where this cannot
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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 Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: Though carved and cut, and half the pearls away,
Streamed from it still; and in her heart she laughed,
Because he had not loosed it from his helm,
But meant once more perchance to tourney in it.
And when they gained the cell wherein he slept,
His battle-writhen arms and mighty hands
Lay naked on the wolfskin, and a dream
Of dragging down his enemy made them move.
Then she that saw him lying unsleek, unshorn,
Gaunt as it were the skeleton of himself,
Uttered a little tender dolorous cry.
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