| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: playing her part like a consummate actress. Presently she suggested a
game of loto, and offered to find the box, on the ground that she
alone knew where it was, and then she disappeared.
"I am suffocating, my poor Brigitte," she cried, wiping the tears that
gushed from her eyes, now brilliant with fever, anxiety, and
impatience. "He does not come," she moaned, looking round the room
prepared for her son. "Here alone I can breathe, I can live! A few
minutes more and he MUST be here; for I know he is living. I am
certain of it, my heart says so. Don't you hear something, Brigitte? I
would give the rest of my life to know at this moment whether he were
still in prison, or out in the free country. Oh! I wish I could stop
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: exceptional bodily strength, and trained in
gymnastics, he was enabled to present a mixed
programme, combining his athletics with feats
of strength, fire-eating, poison-swallowing, and
fire-resistance.
In The Book of Wonderful Characters,
published in 1869 by John Camden Hotten, London,
I find an account of Chamouni, the Russian
Salamander: ``He was insensible, for a
given time, to the effects of heat. He was
remarkable for the simplicity and singleness
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: himself my Mouth, as though I had been one of the Old Dead in
the Barrows for whom our Priests speak to the people on
Midsummer Mornings.'
'I remember. Well I remember those Midsummer Mornings!'
said Puck.
'Then I went away angrily to my Mother's house. She would
have knelt before me. Then I was more angry, but she said,
"Only a God would have spoken to me thus, a Priestess. A man
would have feared the punishment of the Gods." I looked at her
and I laughed. I could not stop my unhappy laughing. They called
me from the door by the name of Tyr himself. A young man with
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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 Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: with these glad advisers. Bright like pictures, clear like a voice
in the porches of her ear, memory re-enacted the tumult of the
evening: the Countess and the dancing fan, the big Baron on his
knees, the blood on the polished floor, the knocking, the swing of
the litter down the avenue of lamps, the messenger, the cries of the
charging mob; and yet all were far away and phantasmal, and she was
still healingly conscious of the peace and glory of the night. She
looked towards Mittwalden; and above the hill-top, which already hid
it from her view, a throbbing redness hinted of fire. Better so:
better so, that she should fall with tragic greatness, lit by a
blazing palace! She felt not a trace of pity for Gondremark or of
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