| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: a place. He can have Ashby, which is much prettier, Harborough,
which has the best shooting in the north of England, and the house
in St. James Square. What more can a gentleman require in this
world?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. Nothing more, I am quite sure.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. As for a title, a title is really rather a
nuisance in these democratic days. As George Harford I had
everything I wanted. Now I have merely everything that other
people want, which isn't nearly so pleasant. Well, my proposal is
this.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I told you I was not interested, and I beg you to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: Mme. de Beauseant stood out in such strong contrast against the
automatons among whom he had spent two months of exile in that out-of-
the-world district of Normandy, that he could not but find in her the
realization of his romantic dreams; and, on the other hand, he could
not compare her perfections with those of other women whom he had
formerly admired. Here in her presence, in a drawing-room like some
salon in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, full of costly trifles lying
about upon the tables, and flowers and books, he felt as if he were
back in Paris. It was a real Parisian carpet beneath his feet, he saw
once more the high-bred type of Parisienne, the fragile outlines of
her form, her exquisite charm, her disdain of the studied effects
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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 Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: of how Filmer passed his life. No one knows how or where he lived,
though it seems highly probable that he continued to support
himself by teaching while he prosecuted the studies necessary for
this distinction. And then, oddly enough, one finds him mentioned
in the correspondence of Arthur Hicks, the poet.
"You remember Filmer," Hicks writes to his friend Vance; "well,
HE hasn't altered a bit, the same hostile mumble and the nasty
chin--how CAN a man contrive to be always three days from shaving?
-- and a sort of furtive air of being engaged in sneaking in front
of one; even his coat and that frayed collar of his show no further
signs of the passing years. He was writing in the library and
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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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social,
literary, or political prejudices, to do away with the need of having
opinions, just as they adapt their conscience to the standard of the
Code or the Tribunal of Commerce. Having started early to become men
of note, they turn into mediocrities, and crawl over the high places
of the world. So, too, their faces present the harsh pallor, the
deceitful coloring, those dull, tarnished eyes, and garrulous, sensual
mouths, in which the observer recognizes the symptoms of the
degeneracy of the thought and its rotation in the circle of a special
idea which destroys the creative faculties of the brain and the gift
of seeing in large, of generalizing and deducing. No man who has
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
