| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.
A woman I forswore; but I will prove,
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love:
Thy grace being gain'd cures all disgrace in me.
My vow was breath, and breath a vapour is;
Then, thou fair sun, that on this earth doth shine,
Exhale this vapour vow; in thee it is:
If broken, then it is no fault of mine.
If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
To break an oath, to win a paradise?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: soak in pale-green snow storms, busy with a nickel-plated revolver,
rescuing aged strangers from villains.
Maggie lost herself in sympathy with the wanderers swooning in
snow storms beneath happy-hued church windows. And a choir within
singing "Joy to the World." To Maggie and the rest of the audience
this was transcendental realism. Joy always within, and they, like
the actor, inevitably without. Viewing it, they hugged themselves
in ecstatic pity of their imagined or real condition.
The girl thought the arrogance and granite-heartedness of the
magnate of the play was very accurately drawn. She echoed the
maledictions that the occupants of the gallery showered on this
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: prices. Pictures presented difficulties which I have hinted at in
an earlier chapter, but I did not despair. I began by hauling old
Lamb, puffing and blowing like a grampus, up to Amy Villa, filling
him up all the way with denunciations of Simla's philistinism and
suggestions that he alone redeemed it.
It is a thing I am ashamed to think of, and it deserved its reward.
Lamb criticized and patronized every blessed thing he saw, advised
Armour to beware of mannerisms and to be a little less liberal with
his colour, and heard absolutely unmoved of the horses Armour had
got into the Salon. 'I understand,' he said, with a benevolent
wink, 'that about four thousand pictures are hung every year at the
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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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: strings of phrases as endless as the macaroni on the table a while
ago.) On that 'eyebrows idem' (no offence to the prefect of police)
Parny, that writer of light and playful verse, would have hung half-a-
dozen couplets, comparing them very agreeably to Cupid's bow, at the
same time bidding us to observe that the dart was beneath; the said
dart, however, was neither very potent nor very penetrating, for as
yet it was controlled by the namby-pamby sweetness of a Mlle. de la
Valliere as depicted on fire-screens, at the moment when she
solemnizes her betrothal in the sight of heaven, any solemnization
before the registrar being quite out to the question.
"You know the effect of fair hair and blue eyes in the soft,
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