| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: the nymph of the grey print frock. I had snatched
up my binoculars, and I can answer for it she didn't
stir a limb, standing by the rail shapely and erect,
with one of her hands grasping a rope at the height
of her head, while the way of the tug carried slowly
past her the lingering and profound homage of the
man. There was for me an enormous significance
in the scene, the sense of having witnessed a solemn
declaration. The die was cast. After such a man-
ifestation he couldn't back out. And I reflected
that it was nothing whatever to me now. With a
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: It was clear that they must have had other habits and other circumstances;
that they must once have been young or at least middle-aged.
There was no end to the questions it was possible to ask about
them and no end to the answers it was not possible to frame.
I had known many of my country-people in Europe and was familiar
with the strange ways they were liable to take up there; but the Misses
Bordereau formed altogether a new type of the American absentee.
Indeed it was plain that the American name had ceased to have
any application to them--I had seen this in the ten minutes I
spent in the old woman's room. You could never have said whence
they came, from the appearance of either of them; wherever it
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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 Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: sunset. The time-worn look of everything, the deep silence of the
woods, the long perspective of the avenue, the forest in the distance,
the rusty iron-work, the masses of stone draped with velvet mosses,
all made poetry of this old structure, which still exists.
At the moment when our history begins Michu was leaning against a
mossy parapet on which he had laid his powder-horn, cap, handkerchief,
screw-driver, and rags,--in fact, all the utensils needed for his
suspicious occupation. His wife's chair was against the wall beside
the outer door of the house, above which could still be seen the arms
of the Simeuse family, richly carved, with their noble motto, "Cy
meurs." The old mother, in peasant dress, had moved her chair in front
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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 Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: who would do the same, as effectually for the race and as
pleasurably to themselves, for the merest fraction of this
monstrous wage. Why it is paid, I am, therefore, unable to
conceive, and as the man pays it himself, out of funds in his
detention, I have a certain backwardness to think him honest.
At least, we have gained a very obvious point: that WHAT A
MAN SPENDS UPON HIMSELF, HE SHALL HAVE EARNED BY SERVICES TO
THE RACE. Thence flows a principle for the outset of life,
which is a little different from that taught in the present
day. I am addressing the middle and the upper classes; those
who have already been fostered and prepared for life at some
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