| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: Yu Hsien, another equally conservative Manchu, she appointed
Governor of Shantung to succeed Li Ping-heng, and it is to him
the whole Boxer uprising is due. Moreover when he, at the
repeated requests of the foreigners, was removed from Shantung,
she received him in audience at Peking, conferred upon him
additional honours and appointed him Governor of the adjoining
province of Shansi, where, and under whose jurisdiction, almost
all the massacres were committed. Indeed Yu Hsien may be
considered the whole Boxer movement, for this seems to have been
his plan for getting rid of the foreigners.
But while thus allying herself with the conservatives, the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: not I. I only break its bondage.
[Exit.]
[PARKER enters L. and crosses towards the ball-room R. Enter MRS.
ERLYNNE.]
MRS. ERLYNNE. Is Lady Windermere in the ball-room?
PARKER. Her ladyship has just gone out.
MRS. ERLYNNE. Gone out? She's not on the terrace?
PARKER. No, madam. Her ladyship has just gone out of the house.
MRS. ERLYNNE. [Starts, and looks at the servant with a puzzled
expression in her face.] Out of the house?
PARKER. Yes, madam - her ladyship told me she had left a letter
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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 In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: "I'll come again to-morrow," said he. "Don't twist your hair back so
tightly; it will lose all its curl."
"Well, you are a funny one," she said. "Good night."
By the time Sabina was ready for bed Anna was snoring. She brushed out her
long hair and gathered it in her hands...Perhaps it would be a pity if it
lost all its curl. Then she looked down at her straight chemise, and
drawing it off, sat down on the side of the bed.
"I wish," she whispered, smiling sleepily, "there was a great big
looking-glass in this room."
Lying down in the darkness, she hugged her little body.
"I wouldn't be the Frau for one hundred marks--not for a thousand marks.
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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 From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: manufactures of battery ware, as it is called (brass), or which is
made out of English copper, most of it duct in these parts--the ore
itself ago being found very rich and good.
Falmouth is well built, has abundance of shipping belonging to it,
is full of rich merchants, and has a flourishing and increasing
trade. I say "increasing," because by the late setting up the
English packets between this port and Lisbon, there is a new
commerce between Portugal and this town carried on to a very great
value.
It is true, part of this trade was founded in a clandestine
commerce carried on by the said packets at Lisbon, where, being the
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