| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: fate.
I was not struck, I confess, with all this in my mind, by any
symptom on our young lady's part of that sort of meditation. The
one moral she saw in anything was that of her incomparable aspect,
which Mr. Dawling, smitten even like the railway porters and the
cabmen by the doom-dealing gods, had followed from London to Venice
and from Venice back to London again. I afterwards learned that
her version of this episode was profusely inexact: his personal
acquaintance with her had been determined by an accident remarkable
enough, I admit, in connexion with what had gone before--a
coincidence at all events superficially striking. At Munich,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: coals or the daily papers. She took charge of them, at any rate,
in all the rooms, at so much a month, and people were quickly
finding out what it was to make over this strange burden of the
pampered to the widow of a clergyman. The widow, on her side,
dilating on the initiations thus opened up to her, had been
splendid to her young friend, over the way she was made free of the
greatest houses--the way, especially when she did the dinner-
tables, set out so often for twenty, she felt that a single step
more would transform her whole social position. On its being asked
of her then if she circulated only in a sort of tropical solitude,
with the upper servants for picturesque natives, and on her having
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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 An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: to sell you that letter, and the price I ask for it is your public
support of the Argentine scheme. You made your own fortune out of
one canal. You must help me and my friends to make our fortunes out
of another!
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. It is infamous, what you propose - infamous!
MRS. CHEVELEY. Oh, no! This is the game of life as we all have to
play it, Sir Robert, sooner or later!
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. I cannot do what you ask me.
MRS. CHEVELEY. You mean you cannot help doing it. You know you are
standing on the edge of a precipice. And it is not for you to make
terms. It is for you to accept them. Supposing you refuse -
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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 The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: I set myself to decipher this.
"I have been injured about the knee, I think my kneecap is hurt, and I
cannot run or crawl," it began - pretty distinctly written.
Then less legibly: "They have been chasing me for some time, and it is
only a question of" - the word "time" seemed to have been written here and
erased in favour of something illegible - "before they get me. They are
beating all about me."
Then the writing became convulsive. "I can hear them," I guessed the
tracing meant, and then it was quite unreadable for a space. Then came a
little string of words that were quite distinct: "a different sort of
Selenite altogether, who appears to be directing the" The writing became a
The First Men In The Moon |
