| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Thus we across the modern stage
Follow the wise of every age;
And, as oaks grow and rivers run
Unchanged in the unchanging sun,
So the eternal march of man
Goes forth on an eternal plan.
SMALL IS THE TRUST WHEN LOVE IS GREEN
SMALL is the trust when love is green
In sap of early years;
A little thing steps in between
And kisses turn to tears.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: intoxicating party, in a corner of a gilded salon where certain
bankers, ambassadors, and the immoral old English earl, Lord Dudley,
were playing cards, Madame Felix de Vandenesse was irresistibly drawn
to converse with Raoul Nathan. Possibly she yielded to that ball-
intoxication which sometimes wrings avowals from the most discreet.
At sight of such a fete, and the splendors of a world in which he had
never before appeared, Nathan was stirred to the soul by fresh
ambition. Seeing Rastignac, whose younger brother had just been made
bishop at twenty-seven years of age, and whose brother-in-law, Martial
de la Roche-Hugon, was a minister, and who himself was under-secretary
of State, and about to marry, rumor said, the only daughter of the
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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 Marie by H. Rider Haggard: beginning the land was theirs. Such, I know, are your hopes, as they
are mine.
It is, however, with an earlier Africa that this story deals. In 1836,
hate and suspicion ran high between the Home Government and its Dutch
subjects. Owing to the freeing of the slaves and mutual
misunderstandings, the Cape Colony was then in tumult, almost in
rebellion, and the Boers, by thousands, sought new homes in the unknown,
savage-peopled North. Of this blood-stained time I have tried to tell;
of the Great Trek and its tragedies, such as the massacre of the
true-hearted Retief and his companions at the hands of the Zulu king,
Dingaan.
Marie |
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 Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: as Croatian peasants wear. All white linen, embroidered ever so
richly, cut low and round at the neck, and with the skirt falling
some four inches below her knee: short sleeves, a small, white
apron, and over her thick, fair hair a bright red kerchief. But
her stockings were of white silk, and small, black buckled
slippers kept the little feet. Clear, blue eyes hers, and a
small merry mouth, and a skin after the sun's own heart. It was
so brown- such an even, delicate brown. Brown cheeks and
temples, brown arms and hands, brown throat. Oh, very
picturesque.
I rounded up the cow errant, returned to my lady, and took my
The Brother of Daphne |
