| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: chose subjects and a character of language that should not
offend a lady. On almost any other occasion Dick would have
enjoyed the scene. Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink,
struck a pitch above mere vanity. He became candid and
explanatory; sought to take his auditors entirely into his
confidence, and tell them his inmost conviction about
himself. Between his self-knowledge, which was considerable,
and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a strange
hybrid animal, and called it by his own name. How he would
plume his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened
the heart of Caesar or St. Paul; and anon, complete his own
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: For all have got the seed.
And some are pretty enough,
And some are poor indeed;
And now again the people
Call it but a weed.
REQUIESCAT.
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Fair is her cottage in its place,
Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides.
It sees itself from thatch to base
Dream in the sliding tides.
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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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: away, some possess the capital for which the others wait; they have
the same tailors, but the bills of the latter are still to pay. Next,
if the first, like sieves, take in ideas of all kinds without
retaining any, the latter compare them and assimilate all the good. If
the first believe they know something, know nothing and understand
everything, lend all to those who need nothing and offer nothing to
those who are in need; the latter study secretly others' thoughts and
place out their money, like their follies, at big interest. The one
class have no more faithful impressions, because their soul, like a
mirror, worn from use, no longer reflects any image; the others
economize their senses and life, even while they seem, like the first,
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly,
for the wretched; but he has far more pity for the rich, for the
hard hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming
slaves to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in
kings' houses. Riches and pleasure seemed to him to be really
greater tragedies than poverty or sorrow. And as for altruism, who
knew better than he that it is vocation not volition that
determines us, and that one cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs
from thistles?
To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his
creed. It was not the basis of his creed. When he says, 'Forgive
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