| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: hand raised as for silence: a man turned to stone. And still the
sounds continued, breathlessly renewed with a precipitate rhythm.
Suddenly Mountain spoke in a loud, broken whisper, as of a man
relieved. "I have it now," he said; and, as we all turned to hear
him, "the Indian must have known the cache," he added. "That is he
- he is digging out the treasure."
"Why, to be sure!" exclaimed Sir William. "We were geese not to
have supposed so much."
"The only thing is," Mountain resumed, "the sound is very close to
our old camp. And, again, I do not see how he is there before us,
unless the man had wings!"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: be most vivid of the stately gait of women carrying burthens
on their heads; of tropical effects, with canes and naked rock
and sunlight; of the relief of cypresses; of the troubled,
busy-looking groups of sea-pines, that seem always as if they
were being wielded and swept together by a whirlwind; of the
air coming, laden with virginal perfumes, over the myrtles and
the scented underwood; of the empurpled hills standing up,
solemn and sharp, out of the green-gold air of the east at
evening.
There go many elements, without doubt, to the making of
one such moment of intense perception; and it is on the happy
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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 Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: old man crept out of his little hut, his two she-goats came to
meet him, and licked his hands in gratitude for the vegetables
with which he supplied them from his garden. "You, at least," he
said--"you, at least, see no differences in form which can alter
your feelings to a benefactor--to you, the finest shape that ever
statuary moulded would be an object of indifference or of alarm,
should it present itself instead of the mis-shapen trunk to whose
services you are accustomed. While I was in the world, did I
ever meet with such a return of gratitude? No; the domestic whom
I had bred from infancy made mouths at me as he stood behind my
chair; the friend whom I had supported with my fortune, and for
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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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: be hurt?"
"I wish no one had to be hurt," said Ann Veronica. "When one is
happy--I don't like to think of them. Last time I left home I
felt as hard as nails. But this is all different. It is
different."
"There's a sort of instinct of rebellion," said Capes. "It isn't
anything to do with our times particularly. People think it is,
but they are wrong. It's to do with adolescence. Long before
religion and Society heard of Doubt, girls were all for midnight
coaches and Gretna Green. It's a sort of home-leaving instinct."
He followed up a line of thought.
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