| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: meant courage, and courage meant honour, and honour meant passion,
meant life. The stake on the table was of a special substance and
our roulette the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board
as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme,
for that matter, with her white face and her fixed eyes, was of the
very type of the lean ladies one had met in the temples of chance.
I recognised in Corvick's absence that she made this analogy vivid.
It was extravagant, I admit, the way she lived for the art of the
pen. Her passion visibly preyed on her, and in her presence I felt
almost tepid. I got hold of "Deep Down" again: it was a desert in
which she had lost herself, but in which too she had dug a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: assaults it so changed its character as to become a thing totally
different from the theory proposed by Volta. The more persistently
it was defended, however, the more clearly did it show itself to be
a congeries of devices, bearing the stamp of dialectic skill rather
than of natural truth.
In conclusion, Faraday brought to bear upon it an argument which,
had its full weight and purport been understood at the time, would
have instantly decided the controversy. 'The contact theory,'
he urged, 'assumed that a force which is able to overcome powerful
resistance, as for instance that of the conductors, good or bad,
through which the current passes, and that again of the electrolytic
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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 Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: primeval, more wooing to a man burdened with civil-
ization, but Rezanov gave it less heed than usual,
although he had turned to it instinctively. He was
occupied with a question to which nature would
turn an aloof disdainful ear. Was his own wounded
vanity at the root of his desire to humiliate Japan?
Russia was too powerful, too occupied, for the pres-
ent at least, greatly to care that her overtures and
presents had been scorned. Upon her ambassador
had fallen the full brunt of that wearisome and in-
comparably mortifying experience, and unfortu-
Rezanov |
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 Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: coming.
Over a month had gone by since the night of the ambush when at last we
outspanned quite close to Umbezi's, in that bush where first I had met
the Amangwane free-spears. A very different set of men they looked on
this triumphant day to those fierce fellows who had slipped out of the
trees at the call of their chief. As we went through the country Saduko
had bought fine moochas and blankets for them; also head-dresses had
been made with the long black feathers of the sakabuli finch, and
shields and leglets of the hides and tails of oxen. Moreover, having
fed plentifully and travelled easily, they were fat and well-favoured,
as, given good food, natives soon become after a period of abstinence.
Child of Storm |
