| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: reverse slope to look for that punt which we knew from experience
was not always to be found easily. I looked after them with dazed,
misty eyes. One, two, three, four.
"Dominic, where's Cesar?" I cried.
As if repulsing the very sound of the name, the Padrone made that
ample, sweeping, knocking-down gesture. I stepped back a pace and
stared at him fearfully. His open shirt uncovered his muscular
neck and the thick hair on his chest. He planted the oar upright
in the soft soil, and rolling up slowly his right sleeve, extended
the bare arm before my face.
"This," he began, with an extreme deliberation, whose superhuman
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the
listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.
Even the Secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an
over-driven Executive Officer to take census of wheat-weevils
through a district of five thousand square miles.
There was a man once in the Foreign Office--a man who had grown
middle-aged in the department, and was commonly said, by irreverent
juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison's "Treaties and Sunnuds"
backwards, in his sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge only
the Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news
abroad. This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth, in
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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 Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: well acquainted.
'What?' he cried. 'Have you been out alone? How did you
manage?'
But Macfarlane silenced him roughly, bidding him turn to
business. When they had got the body upstairs and laid it on
the table, Macfarlane made at first as if he were going away.
Then he paused and seemed to hesitate; and then, 'You had
better look at the face,' said he, in tones of some
constraint. 'You had better,' he repeated, as Fettes only
stared at him in wonder.
'But where, and how, and when did you come by it?' cried 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 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: day gay, and frivolous for the world; but in that sad struggle to
escape my real life I wasted my fortune. The revolution of 1830 came;
it came at the very moment when I had met, at the end of that Arabian
Nights' life, a pure and sacred love which (I desire to be honest) I
had longed to know. Was it not natural in a woman whose heart,
repressed by many causes and accidents, was awakening at an age when a
woman feels herself cheated if she has never known, like the women she
sees about her, a happy love? Ah! why was Michel Chrestien so
respectful? Why did he not seek to meet me? There again was another
mockery! But what of that? in falling, I have lost everything; I have
no illusions left; I had tasted of all things except the one fruit for
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