| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: up on the box beside the driver. A young girl and an old man in
livery were placing bags and bundles of rugs inside the carriage.
Muller walked slowly toward the carriage. Just as he reached the
open gate of the garden he was obliged to halt, to his own great
satisfaction. For at this moment a group of people came out from
the house, the owners of it evidently, prepared for a journey and
surrounded by their servants.
Beside the old man and the young girl, there were two other women,
one evidently the housekeeper, the other possibly the cook. The
latter was weeping openly and devoutly kissing the hand of her
mistress. The housekeeper discovered that a rug was missing 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 Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: the socialistic and humanitarian points of view. We need not
discuss these impertinences: it is easier to silence them with
the facts of Wagner's life. In 1843 he obtained the position of
conductor of the Opera at Dresden at a salary of L225 a year,
with a pension. This was a first-rate permanent appointment in
the service of the Saxon State, carrying an assured professional
position and livelihood with it In 1848, the year of revolutions,
the discontented middle class, unable to rouse the
Churchand-State governments of the day from their bondage to
custom, caste, and law by appeals to morality or constitutional
agitation for Liberal reforms, made common cause with the
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