| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: desperate I had chanced on a signpost pointing to the town I
sought. The next moment one of the tires had gone.
The puncture I did not mind, The car had detachable wheels, and
one was all ready, waiting to be used. But when I found that I
had no jack...Better men than I would have sworn. The
imperturbable Jonah would have stamped about the road. As for
Berry, with no one there to suffer his satire, suppressed enmity
would have brought about a collapse. He would probably have lost
his memory.
There was nothing for it, but to drive slowly forward on the flat
tire. When I came to a village I could rouse an innkeeper, and
The Brother of Daphne |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: other, and the missile, whatever it was, dropped in the
stream and was gone before I had recovered my wits. (I
scarce know what I write, so hideous a Niagara of rain roars,
shouts, and demonizes on the iron roof - it is pitch dark too
- the lamp lit at 5!) It was a blessed thing when I struck
my own road; and I got home, neat for lunch time, one of the
most wonderful mud statues ever witnessed. In the afternoon
I tried again, going up the other path by the garden, but was
early drowned out; came home, plotted out what I had done,
and then wrote this truck to you.
Fanny has been quite ill with ear-ache. She won't go, hating
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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 Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: admittance, to be duly passed on to the Vicomtesse. Was not M. de
Champignelles a man of honor, a loyal gentleman incapable of lending
himself to any transaction in bad taste, nay, the merest suspicion of
bad taste! Love lends a young man all the self-possession and astute
craft of an old ambassador; all the Marquis' harmless vanities were
gratified, and the haughty grandee was completely duped. He tried hard
to fathom Gaston's secret; but the latter, who would have been greatly
perplexed to tell it, turned off M. de Champignelles' adroit
questioning with a Norman's shrewdness, till the Marquis, as a gallant
Frenchman, complimented his young visitor upon his discretion.
M. de Champignelles hurried off at once to Courcelles, with that
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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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: Part 2
She found the younger generation of the Widgetts engaged in
languid reminiscences, and all, as they expressed it, a "bit
decayed." Every one became tremendously animated when they heard
that Ann Veronica had failed them because she had been, as she
expressed it, "locked in."
"My God!" said Teddy, more impressively than ever.
"But what are you going to do?" asked Hetty.
"What can one do?" asked Ann Veronica. "Would you stand it? I'm
going to clear out."
"Clear out?" cried Hetty.
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