| 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: with her feet propped on a wooden footstool. On
the other side of the deck Hermann and I would
get a couple of chairs out of the cabin and settle
down to a smoking match, accompanied at long in-
tervals by the pacific exchange of a few words. I
came nearly every evening. Hermann I would find
in his shirt sleeves. As soon as he returned from
the shore on board his ship he commenced operations
by taking off his coat; then he put on his head an
embroidered round cap with a tassel, and changed
his boots for a pair of cloth slippers. Afterwards
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: very suspicions character; in fact, he was generally believed to
have been a pirate. She herself was the daughter of very
respectable tradespeople, and had served in the capacity of a
nursery governess before her marriage. She had a brother, a
widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child of about
six years old. A month after the marriage the body of this brother
was found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some
marks of violence about his throat, but they were not deemed
sufficient to warrant the inquest in any other verdict that that of
"found drowned."
The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the
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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 Message by Honore de Balzac: mother was away from home, which in a manner was fortunate for
me. Nevertheless, I had to assuage the grief of an old woman-
servant, who staggered back at the tidings of her young master's
death, and sank half-dead into a chair when she saw the blood-
stained key. But I had another and more dreadful sorrow to think
of, the sorrow of a woman who had lost her last love; so I left
the old woman to her prosopopeia, and carried off the precious
correspondence, carefully sealed by my friend of the day.
The Countess' chateau was some eight leagues beyond Moulins, and
then there was some distance to walk across country. So it was
not exactly an easy matter to deliver my message. For divers
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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 Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: Floats in the pearly dusk of spring,
Come with arms outstretched to take me,
Come with lips pursed up to cling.
Come, for life is a frail moth flying,
Caught in the web of the years that pass,
And soon we two, so warm and eager,
Will be as the gray stones in the grass.
Joy
I am wild, I will sing to the trees,
I will sing to the stars in the sky,
I love, I am loved, he is mine,
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