| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: an acute case of shopping fever before you know it. Nor will it be
much consolation subsequently to discover that you have squandered
your patrimony upon the most ordinary articles of every-day use.
If in despair you turn for refuge to the booths, you will but have
delivered yourself into the embrace of still more irresistible
fascinations. For the nocturnal squatters are there for the express
purpose of catching the susceptible. The shops were modestly
attractive from their nature, but the booths deliberately make eyes
at you, and with telling effect. The very atmosphere is bewitching.
The lurid smurkiness of the torches lends an appropriate weirdness
to the figure of the uncouthly clad pedlar who, with the politeness
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: high professions than Mrs. Redmondson's spoilt children. Behind the
now inevitable struggle for a reform of the House of Lords, there
would be great heart searchings and educational endeavour. On that
we reckoned. . . .
At last we talked it out to the practical pitch, and Crupp and
Shoesmith, and I and Gane, made our definite agreement together. . . .
I emerged from enormous silences upon Margaret one evening.
She was just back from the display of some new musicians at the
Hartsteins. I remember she wore a dress of golden satin, very rich-
looking and splendid. About her slender neck there was a rope of
gold-set amber beads. Her hair caught up and echoed and returned
|
