| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: tried to inveigle him into talking scandal about me.
You came to me with tales about him. You went to
Father Forbes, and sought to get him to gossip about
us both. Neither of those men will ever ask you inside
his house again. But that is only one part of it.
Your whole mind became an unpleasant thing to contemplate.
You thought it would amuse and impress us to hear you
ridiculing and reviling the people of your church,
whose money supports you, and making a mock of the things
they believe in, and which you for your life wouldn't dare
let them know you didn't believe in. You talked to us
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: that cost a dollar apiece. I have examined those and know that
they are made of dog-hair, and not good dog-hair at that.
I have a thoroughly satisfactory time in Europe, for all
over the Continent one finds cigars which not even the most
hardened newsboys in New York would smoke. I brought cigars with
me, the last time; I will not do that any more. In Italy, as in
France, the Government is the only cigar-peddler. Italy has
three or four domestic brands: the Minghetti, the Trabuco, the
Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification of the
Virginia. The Minghettis are large and comely, and cost three
dollars and sixty cents a hundred; I can smoke a hundred in seven
What is Man? |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: These matters being arranged, they prepared to embark; but the
embarkation of a crew of Canadian voyageurs, on a distant
expedition, is not so easy a matter as might be imagined;
especially of such a set of vainglorious fellows with money in
both pockets, and cocks' tails in their hats. Like sailors, the
Canadian voyageurs generally preface a long cruise with a
carouse. They have their cronies, their brothers, their cousins,
their wives, their sweethearts, all to be entertained at their
expense. They feast, they fiddle, they drink, they sing, they
dance, they frolic and fight, until they are all as mad as so
many drunken Indians. The publicans are all obedience to their
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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 Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: doubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardly
more natural than the contortions of disease; but I don't after all
know why I should in this connexion so much as mention them. For
the few persons, at any rate, abnormal or not, with whom my
anecdote is concerned, literature was a game of skill, and skill
meant courage, and courage meant honour, and honour meant passion,
meant life. The stake on the table was of a special substance and
our roulette the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board
as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme,
for that matter, with her white face and her fixed eyes, was of the
very type of the lean ladies one had met in the temples of chance.
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