| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: it was for abhorrence of witches and necromancers, the dangerous
character of an expounder of futurity. It was at length rumoured
that, for a certain gratification, which of course was not an
inconsiderable one, Doctor Baptista Damiotti could tell the fate
of the absent, and even show his visitors the personal form of
their absent friends, and the action in which they were engaged
at the moment. This rumour came to the ears of Lady Forester,
who had reached that pitch of mental agony in which the sufferer
will do anything, or endure anything, that suspense may be
converted into certainty.
Gentle and timid in most cases, her state of mind made her
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: nights of anxiety and many days of success. He noticed, too, that
when she spoke to the old man her voice was tempered with a
peculiar tenderness, as if his infirmities were more to be pitied
than complained of. This pleased him most of all.
"You live with your daughter, Mrs. Grogan?" Babcock asked in a
friendly way, turning to the old man.
"Yis, sor. Whin Tom got sick, she sint fer me to come over an'
hilp her. I feeds the horses whin Oi'm able, an' looks after the
garden, but Oi'm not much good."
"Is Mr. Thomas Grogan living?" asked Babcock cautiously, and with
a certain tone of respect, hoping to get closer to the facts, and
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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 Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Far off he heard the city's hum and noise,
And now and then the shriller laughter where
The passionate purity of brown-limbed boys
Wrestled or raced in the clear healthful air,
And now and then a little tinkling bell
As the shorn wether led the sheep down to the mossy well.
Through the grey willows danced the fretful gnat,
The grasshopper chirped idly from the tree,
In sleek and oily coat the water-rat
Breasting the little ripples manfully
Made for the wild-duck's nest, from bough to bough
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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 Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: month after bomb-throwing and Cossack charging. Windows have still
to be mended, smashed doors restored. There's blood-stains still on
some of the houses. There are hundreds of people in the Citadel and
in the Ochrana prison. This morning there were executions. Is it
anything more than an eddy in the real life of the place? Watch the
customers in the shops, the crowd in the streets, the men in the
cafes who stare at the passing women. They are all swallowed up
again in their own business. They just looked up as the Cossacks
galloped past; they just shifted a bit when the bullets spat. . . ."
And when the streets of Moscow were agog with the grotesque amazing
adventure of the Potemkin mutineers, Prothero was in the full tide
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