| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: she said once more with eager insistence, "Who are you?"
"Oh, I'm a ghost!" I cried with conviction, pressing my hands
to my forehead and looking round fearfully.
"Pooh," said the little girl.
It was the last remark I heard her make, for there was a creaking
of approaching boots in the bushes, and seized by a frightful panic I
pulled the gate open with one desperate pull, flung it to behind me,
and fled out and away down the wide, misty fields.
The Gotha Almanach says that the reigning cousin married
the daughter of a Mr. Johnstone, an Englishman, in 1885,
and that in 1886 their only child was born, Elizabeth. <106>
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: howling of that endless gale, and on that the voice of the old man.
He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face out of his sou'wester.
"`Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer
as chief mate of this ship.'"
His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous.
He rested a hand on the end of the skylight to steady himself with,
and all that time did not stir a limb, so far as I could see.
"Nice little tale for a quiet tea party," he concluded
in the same tone.
One of my hands, too, rested on the end of the skylight; neither did I stir
a limb, so far as I knew. We stood less than a foot from each other.
The Secret Sharer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: They are responding to the actual, instant needs of their boys in
the trenches and the camps; and this is bound to have an effect
upon their psychology. Just as we can say that an English girl
who leaves the narrow circle of her old life, and goes into a
munition factory and joins a union and takes part in its debates,
will never after be a docile home-slave; so we can say that the
clergyman who helps in Y. M. C. A. work in France, or in Red
Cross organization in America, will be less the bigot and
formalist forever after. He will have learned, in spite of
himself, to adjust means to ends; he will have learned
co-operation and social solidarity by the method which modern
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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 Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: CVIII
The way he found not easy as he would,
But fierce encounters put him oft to pain,
He met Ormanno and Rogero bold,
Of Balnavile, Guy, and the Gerrards twain;
Yet nothing might his rage and haste withhold,
These worthies strove to stop him, but in vain,
With these strong lets increased still his ire,
Like rivers stopped, or closely smouldered fire.
CIX
He slew Ormanno, and wounded Guy, and laid
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