| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: guns.
At the end of the meal we were served with coffee. I noticed the Baron
took three lumps of sugar, putting two in his cup and wrapping up the third
in a corner of his pocket-handkerchief. He was always the first to enter
the dining-room and the last to leave; and in a vacant chair beside him he
placed a little black leather bag.
In the afternoon, leaning from my window, I saw him pass down the street,
walking tremulously and carrying the bag. Each time he passed a lamp-post
he shrank a little, as though expecting it to strike him, or maybe the
sense of plebeian contamination...
I wondered where he was going, and why he carried the bag. Never had I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: "Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself
And touch it, it will crumble into dust."
`And thence I dropt into a lowly vale,
Low as the hill was high, and where the vale
Was lowest, found a chapel, and thereby
A holy hermit in a hermitage,
To whom I told my phantoms, and he said:
`"O son, thou hast not true humility,
The highest virtue, mother of them all;
For when the Lord of all things made Himself
Naked of glory for His mortal change,
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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 The Aspern Papers by Henry James: But I was only praying it would open or thinking what treasure probably
lurked behind it. I hold it singular, as I look back, that I should never
have doubted for a moment that the sacred relics were there; never have
failed to feel a certain joy at being under the same roof with them.
After all they were under my hand--they had not escaped me yet;
and they made my life continuous, in a fashion, with the illustrious
life they had touched at the other end. I lost myself in this
satisfaction to the point of assuming--in my quiet extravagance--
that poor Miss Tita also went back, went back, as I used to phrase it.
She did indeed, the gentle spinster, but not quite so far as Jeffrey Aspern,
who was simply hearsay to her, quite as he was to me. Only she had
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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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: me, my Prince. O Lord, it's going to be courtly! And there is not
an ugly person nor an ugly scene in it. The SLATE both Fanny and I
have damned utterly; it is too morbid, ugly, and unkind; better
starvation.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO SIDNEY COLVIN
608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, [MARCH 1880].
MY DEAR COLVIN, - My landlord and landlady's little four-year-old
child is dying in the house; and O, what he has suffered. It has
really affected my health. O never, never any family for me! I am
cured of that.
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