| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: and we all smoked reckless-looking pipes,--there was a transient
fashion among us for corn cobs for which Mark Twain, I think, was
responsible. Our little excesses with liquor were due far more to
conscience than appetite, indicated chiefly a resolve to break away
from restraints that we suspected were keeping us off the
instructive knife-edges of life. Hatherleigh was a good Englishman
of the premature type with a red face, a lot of hair, a deep voice
and an explosive plunging manner, and it was he who said one
evening--Heaven knows how we got to it--" Look here, you know, it's
all Rot, this Shutting Up about Women. We OUGHT to talk about them.
What are we going to do about them? It's got to come. We're all
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: red-coated officer of the old French war; and there comes the
shop-keeping Pyncheon of a century ago, with the ruffles turned
back from his wrists; and there the periwigged and brocaded
gentleman of the artist's legend, with the beautiful and pensive
Alice, who brings no pride out of her virgin grave. All try the
picture-frame. What do these ghostly people seek? A mother lifts
her child, that his little hands may touch it! There is evidently
a mystery about the picture, that perplexes these poor Pyncheons
when they ought to be at rest. In a corner, meanwhile, stands the
figure of an elderly man, in a leathern jerkin and breeches, with
a carpenter's rule sticking out of his side pocket; he points his
House of Seven Gables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: conquered, because the writers of those nations, Augustine, Salvian,
and Sidonius Apollinaris, for example, say that they were such, and
give proof thereof. Not good men according to our higher standard--
far from it; though Sidonius's picture of Theodoric, the East Goth,
in his palace of Narbonne, is the picture of an eminently good and
wise ruler. But not good, I say, as a rule--the Franks, alas! often
very bad men: but still better, wiser, abler, than those whom they
ruled. We must believe too, that they were better, in every sense
of the word, than those tribes on their eastern frontier, whom they
conquered in after centuries, unless we discredit (which we have no
reason to do) the accounts which the Roman and Greek writers give of
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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 Cavalry General by Xenophon: their front"; or lastly, supposing you have reached flat country, "to
form squadron in order of battle." If only for the sake of practice,
it is well to go through evolutions of the sort;[4] besides which it
adds pleasure to the march thus to diversify the line of route with
cavalry mavouvres.
[2] See "Hell." V. iv. 40 for a case in point.
[3] Or, "advance by column of route." See "Hell." VII. iv. 23.
[4] Or, "it is a pleasant method of beguiling the road." Cf. Plat.
"Laws," i. 625 B.
Supposing, however, you are off roads altogether and moving fast over
difficult ground, no matter whether you are in hostile or in friendly
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