| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: my house-shoes, and there I stayed in the middle of the road...staring.
People must have laughed if they saw me...
...Goodness gracious!--What's that? It's the clock striking! And here
I've been keeping you awake. Oh, madam, you ought to have stopped me...Can
I tuck in your feet? I always tuck in my lady's feet, every night, just
the same. And she says, "Good night, Ellen. Sleep sound and wake early!"
I don't know what I should do if she didn't say that, now.
...Oh dear, I sometimes think...whatever should I do if anything were
to...But, there, thinking's no good to any one--is it, madam? Thinking
won't help. Not that I do it often. And if ever I do I pull myself up
sharp, "Now, then, Ellen. At it again--you silly girl! If you can't find
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: -ay, every atom of manure which the farmers put on the land--foul
enough then, but pure enough before it touches me--each of these,
giving off a tiny atom of what men call carbonic acid, melts a
tiny grain of chalk, and helps to send it down through the solid
hill by one of the million pores and veins which at once feed and
burden my springs. Ages on ages I have worked on thus, carrying
the chalk into the sea. And ages on ages, it may be, I shall work
on yet; till I have done my work at last, and levelled the high
downs into a flat sea-shore, with beds of flint gravel rattling in
the shallow waves.
She might tell you that; and when she had told you, you would
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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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: implies some ponderable matter in dispute, some dignus vindice
nodus; and this piece of work was all about the petulance of a
young ass that had been spoiled, and wanted nothing so much as to
be tied up and soundly belted. However, that was not your
father's view; and the end of it was, that from concession to
concession on your father's part, and from one height to another
of squalling, sentimental selfishness upon your uncle's, they
came at last to drive a sort of bargain, from whose ill results
you have recently been smarting. The one man took the lady, the
other the estate. Now, Mr. David, they talk a great deal of
charity and generosity; but in this disputable state of life, I
Kidnapped |
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 Phaedo by Plato: we had no clear account.
PHAEDO: Did you not hear of the proceedings at the trial?
ECHECRATES: Yes; some one told us about the trial, and we could not
understand why, having been condemned, he should have been put to death,
not at the time, but long afterwards. What was the reason of this?
PHAEDO: An accident, Echecrates: the stern of the ship which the
Athenians send to Delos happened to have been crowned on the day before he
was tried.
ECHECRATES: What is this ship?
PHAEDO: It is the ship in which, according to Athenian tradition, Theseus
went to Crete when he took with him the fourteen youths, and was the
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