| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: you have ever seen."
It was a tiny room, hung all round with
French prints, above which ran a shelf full
of china. Hilda saw Alexander look up at it.
"It's not particularly rare," she said,
"but some of it was my mother's. Heaven knows
how she managed to keep it whole, through all
our wanderings, or in what baskets and bundles
and theatre trunks it hasn't been stowed away.
We always had our tea out of those blue cups
when I was a little girl, sometimes in the
Alexander's Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: and Meletus. Yet incidentally the antagonism between Socrates and the
Sophists is allowed to appear. He is poor and they are rich; his
profession that he teaches nothing is opposed to their readiness to teach
all things; his talking in the marketplace to their private instructions;
his tarry-at-home life to their wandering from city to city. The tone
which he assumes towards them is one of real friendliness, but also of
concealed irony. Towards Anaxagoras, who had disappointed him in his hopes
of learning about mind and nature, he shows a less kindly feeling, which is
also the feeling of Plato in other passages (Laws). But Anaxagoras had
been dead thirty years, and was beyond the reach of persecution.
It has been remarked that the prophecy of a new generation of teachers who
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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 Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: to do that. And the trick was no longer voted ugly; on the
contrary, the men raised their opera glasses. When she came to the
end of a verse her voice completely failed her, and she was well
aware that she never would get through with it. Thereupon, rather
than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, which forthwith was
roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent sharply backward,
so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and stretched her
arms out. Applause burst forth on all sides. In the twinkling of
an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the stage,
presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators' gaze, a neck
where the red-gold hair showed like some animal's fell. Then the
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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 The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: retired to the safe distance where the horses stood.
We progressed very, very slowly. Every splash of light or mottled
shadow, every clump of bush stems, every fallen log had to be
examined, and then examined again. And how we did strain our eyes
in a vain attempt to penetrate the half lights, the duskinesses
of the closed-in thicket not over fifteen feet away! And then the
movement forward of two feet would bring into our field of vision
an entirely new set of tiny vistas and possible lurking places.
Speaking for myself, I was keyed up to a tremendous tension. I
stared until my eyes ached; every muscle and nerve was taut.
Everything depended on seeing the beast promptly, and firing
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