| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: method so able to enter into everything another might feel. "But
it's not only that; for honestly, at my age, I never dreamed - a
widower with big boys and with so little else! It has turned out
differently from anything one could have dreamed, and I'm fortunate
beyond all measure. She has been so free, and yet she consents.
Better than any one else perhaps - for I remember how you liked her
before you went away, and how she liked you - you can intelligently
congratulate me."
"She has been so free!" Those words made a great impression on
Paul Overt, and he almost writhed under that irony in them as to
which it so little mattered whether it was designed or casual. Of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: John: you promised--
TARLETON. Yes, yes. All right, Chickabiddy: dont fuss. Your
precious Johnny shant be interfered with. _[Bouncing up, too
energetic to sit still]_ But I'm getting sick of that old shop.
Thirty-five years Ive had of it: same blessed old stairs to go up and
down every day: same old lot: same old game: sorry I ever started
it now. I'll chuck it and try something else: something that will
give a scope to all my faculties.
HYPATIA. Theres money in underwear: theres none in wild-cat ideas.
TARLETON. Theres money in me, madam, no matter what I go into.
MRS TARLETON. Dont boast, John. Dont tempt Providence.
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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 Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: which I have described, and those which followed, that I knew the
last to be deceptions of my own fancy and over-excited nerves.
"Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed ill in health and
humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a
soldier, and still more so at feeling my own extreme desire to
escape from the haunted apartment, which, however, conquered all
other considerations; so that, huddling on my clothes with the
most careless haste, I made my escape from your lordship's
mansion, to seek in the open air some relief to my nervous
system, shaken as it was by this horrible rencounter with a
visitant, for such I must believe her, from the other world.
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: his second observation, a long light reach with which, visibly and
quite amusedly, he recalled and placed her. They were on different
sides, but the street, narrow and still, had only made more of a
stage for the small momentary drama. It was not over, besides, it
was far from over, even on his sending across the way, with the
pleasantest laugh she had ever heard, a little lift of his hat and
an "Oh good evening!" It was still less over on their meeting, the
next minute, though rather indirectly and awkwardly, in the middle,
of the road--a situation to which three or four steps of her own
had unmistakeably contributed--and then passing not again to the
side on which she had arrived, but back toward the portal of Park
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