| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: emotions, terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought,
therefore, to be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of
love, is the keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find
once more the lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles;
the passionate exaltations of the heart which the face must not
betray; the fear that we may not be understood, and the boundless joy
of being so; the hesitations of the soul which recoils upon itself,
and the magnetic propulsions which give to the eyes an infinitude of
shades; the promptings to suicide caused by a word, dispelled by an
intonation; trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden
desires to speak and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; 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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: artist in the picturesque. More than one woman, on whom I
tried the experiment, immediately claimed the writer for a
fellow-woman. More than one literary purist might identify
him as a shoddy newspaper correspondent without the necessary
faculty of style. And yet the story touches home; and if you
are of the weeping order of mankind, you will certainly find
your eyes fill with tears, of which you have no reason to be
ashamed. There is only one way to characterise a work of
this order, and that is to quote. Here is a passage from a
letter to a mother, unknown to Whitman, whose son died in
hospital:-
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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 Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: We had now reached the southernmost extremity of the
great ice barrier. It ended abruptly in a sheer wall thousands
of feet high at the base of which stretched a level valley,
broken here and there by low rolling hills and little clumps
of forest, and with tiny rivers formed by the melting of the
ice barrier at its base.
Once we passed far above what seemed to be a deep
canyon-like rift stretching from the ice wall on the north
across the valley as far as the eye could reach. "That is the
bed of the River Iss," said Xodar. "It runs far beneath the
ice field, and below the level of the Valley Otz, but its canyon
The Gods of Mars |
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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: infuriated at their loss, for those costly machines belong to the
labourers and not to the ship-owners, turned upon the mob and
began to throw brickbats, pieces of iron, chunks of wood,
anything that came to hand. It was pandemonium turned loose over
a turgid stream, with a malarial sun to heat the passions to
fever point.
Mr. Baptiste had taken refuge behind a bread-stall on the outside
of the market. He had taken off his cap, and was weakly cheering
the Negroes on.
"Bravo!" cheered Mr. Baptiste.
"Will yez look at that damned fruit-eatin' Frinchman!" howled
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
