| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: under cover of the whimperings of the babe, the bonesetter said in her
ear:--
"Take care of him, and he'll live a hundred years. Beauvouloir knows
what he is talking about."
A celestial sigh, a silent pressure of the hand were the reward of the
leech, who had looked to see, before yielding the frail little
creature to its mother's embrace, whether that of the father had done
no harm to its puny organization. The half-crazed motion with which
the mother hid her son beside her and the threatening glance she cast
upon the count through the eye-holes of her mask, made Beauvouloir
shudder.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: for the most part quite incapable of understanding what is happening
to them: a merciful provision of nature to preserve an average
amount of sanity for working purposes in this world . . . "
"But we, my dear Marlow, have the inestimable advantage of
understanding what is happening to others," I struck in. "Or at
least some of us seem to. Is that too a provision of nature? And
what is it for? Is it that we may amuse ourselves gossiping about
each other's affairs? You for instance seem--"
"I don't know what I seem," Marlow silenced me, "and surely life
must be amused somehow. It would be still a very respectable
provision if it were only for that end. But from that same
Chance |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: Lady Ella saw things differently again. "If you had stayed in
the church," she said afterwards, "you might have helped to alter
such things as that."
At the time he had no answer.
"But," he said presently as they went back in the tube to their
modest Bloomsbury hotel, "if I had stayed in the church I should
never have realized things like that."
(4)
But it does no justice to Lady Ella to record these two
unavoidable expressions of regret without telling also of the
rallying courage with which she presently took over the task of
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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 American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: the other in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break
themselves over horse-flesh and other things, and they are
instant in a quarrel. At twenty they are experienced in
business, embark in vast enterprises, take partners as
experienced as themselves, and go to pieces with as much splendor
as their neighbors. Remember that the men who stocked California
in the fifties were physically, and, as far as regards certain
tough virtues, the pick of the earth. The inept and the weakly
died en route, or went under in the days of construction. To
this nucleus were added all the races of the Continent--French,
Italian, German, and, of course, the Jew.
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