| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: adornments, God had sent at last an opportunity. I know I am
touching here upon a nerve acutely sensitive. I know that others
of your colleagues look back on the inertia of your Church, and the
intrusive and decisive heroism of Damien, with something almost to
be called remorse. I am sure it is so with yourself; I am
persuaded your letter was inspired by a certain envy, not
essentially ignoble, and the one human trait to be espied in that
performance. You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day;
of that which should have been conceived and was not; of the
service due and not rendered. TIME WAS, said the voice in your
ear, in your pleasant room, as you sat raging and writing; and if
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: a very few. That is certainly quite a heavy footstep prowling
around the provision-box. Could it be a panther,--they step very
softly for their size,--or a bear perhaps? Sam Dunning told about
catching one in a trap just below here. (Ah, my boy, you will soon
learn that there is no spot in all the forests created by a
bountiful Providence so poor as to be without its bear story.)
Where was the rifle put? There it is, at the foot of the tent-
pole. Wonder if it is loaded?
"Waugh-ho! Waugh-ho-o-o-o!"
The boy springs from his blankets like a cat, and peeps out between
the tent-flaps. There sits Enos, in the shelter of a leaning tree
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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 My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: limbs, to visit my respected relation at least three times a
week. Her abode is about half a mile from the suburbs of the
town in which I reside, and is accessible, not only by the
highroad, from which it stands at some distance, but by means of
a greensward footpath leading through some pretty meadows. I
have so little left to torment me in life, that it is one of my
greatest vexations to know that several of these sequestered
fields have been devoted as sites for building. In that which is
nearest the town, wheelbarrows have been at work for several
weeks in such numbers, that, I verily believe, its whole surface,
to the depth of at least eighteen inches, was mounted in these
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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 Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: Memmi to the English for bread for the living Prince Varese! Genovese,
the famous tenor, could get in one season, by his warbling, the
capital of an income on which this son of the Memmi could live--this
descendant of Roman senators as venerable as Caesar and Sylla.
Genovese may smoke an Eastern hookah, and the Prince of Varese cannot
even have enough cigars!"
He tossed the end he was smoking into the sea. The Prince of Varese
found cigars at the Duchess Cataneo's; how gladly would he have laid
the treasures of the world at her feet! She studied all his caprices,
and was happy to gratify them. He made his only meal at her house--his
supper; for all his money was spent in clothes and his place in the
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