| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: conundrum. She observed me with her shrewd, unintelligent eyes for
a bit, and then with the fatuous remark about the Law being just
she left me to the horrors of the studio. I believe I went to
sleep there from sheer exhaustion. Some time during the night I
woke up chilled to the bone and in the dark. These were horrors
and no mistake. I dragged myself upstairs to bed past the
indefatigable statuette holding up the ever-miserable light. The
black-and-white hall was like an ice-house.
The main consideration which induced me to call on the Marquis of
Villarel was the fact that after all I was a discovery of Dona
Rita's, her own recruit. My fidelity and steadfastness had been
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: showed magnanimity in not reproaching him with his collapse, for
the sense of his having thrown up the game made me feel more than
ever how much I at last depended on him. If Corvick had broken
down I should never know; no one would be of any use if HE wasn't.
It wasn't a bit true I had ceased to care for knowledge; little by
little my curiosity not only had begun to ache again, but had
become the familiar torment of my days and my nights. There are
doubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardly
more natural than the contortions of disease; but I don't after all
know why I should in this connexion so much as mention them. For
the few persons, at any rate, abnormal or not, with whom my
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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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: answered to it:-
1. That the annual rent to be received for all those lands after
twenty years would abundantly pay the public for the first
disburses on the scheme above, that rent being then to amount to
40,000 pounds per annum.
2. More money than would have done this was expended, or rather
thrown away, upon them here, to keep them in suspense, and
afterwards starve them; sending them a-begging all over the nation,
and shipping them off to perish in other countries. Where the
mistake lay is none of my business to inquire.
I reserved this account for this place, because I passed in this
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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 Gorgias by Plato: POLUS: Then, according to your doctrine, the said Archelaus is miserable?
SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, if he is wicked.
POLUS: That he is wicked I cannot deny; for he had no title at all to the
throne which he now occupies, he being only the son of a woman who was the
slave of Alcetas the brother of Perdiccas; he himself therefore in strict
right was the slave of Alcetas; and if he had meant to do rightly he would
have remained his slave, and then, according to your doctrine, he would
have been happy. But now he is unspeakably miserable, for he has been
guilty of the greatest crimes: in the first place he invited his uncle and
master, Alcetas, to come to him, under the pretence that he would restore
to him the throne which Perdiccas has usurped, and after entertaining him
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