| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: expansion; this, which fills with a lofty enthusiasm the heart of the young
girl, who, it may be, in some solitary farm-house, in some distant wild of
Africa or America, deep into the night bends over her books with the
passion and fervour with which an early Christian may have bent over the
pages of his Scriptures; feeling that, it may be, she fits herself by each
increase of knowledge for she knows not what duties towards the world, in
the years to come. It is this consciousness of great impersonal ends, to
be brought, even if slowly and imperceptibly, a little nearer by her
action, which gives to many a woman strength for renunciation, when she
puts from her the lower type of sexual relationship, even if bound up with
all the external honour a legal bond can confer, if it offers her only
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: thing, as in a meaningless opera. Thus, children in full
health and spirits shout together, to the dismay of
neighbours; and their idle, happy, deafening vociferations
rise and fall, like the song of the crickets. I used to sit
at night on the platform, and wonder why these creatures were
so happy; and what was wrong with man that he also did not
wind up his days with an hour or two of shouting; but I
suspect that all long-lived animals are solemn. The dogs
alone are hardly used by nature; and it seems a manifest
injustice for poor Chuchu to die in his teens, after a life
so shadowed and troubled, continually shaken with alarm, and
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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 The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: passes the blow that has hurt him on to his playmate, that both
may bawl together. And now Alison sat, white and cold, without
speech.
"Married!" she said finally, in a small voice. "Why, I don't think
it is possible, is it? I - I was on my way to Baltimore to marry
him myself, when the wreck came."
"But you said you didn't care for him!" I protested, my heavy
masculine mind unable to jump the gaps in her story. And then,
without the slightest warning, I realized that she was crying. She
shook off my hand and fumbled for her handkerchief, and failing to
find it, she accepted the one I thrust into her wet fingers.
The Man in Lower Ten |
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 Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: to his many friends in that city. He called at the old Cooper
house. It was on a Sunday afternoon. The spring was early and
the weather extremely pleasant that day, being filled with a
warmth almost as of summer. The apple trees were already in full
bloom and filled all the air with their fragrance. Everywhere
there seemed to be the pervading hum of bees, and the drowsy,
tepid sunshine was very delightful.
At that time Eleazer was just home from an unusually successful
voyage to Antigua. Mainwaring found the family sitting under one
of the still leafless chestnut trees, Captain Cooper smoking his
long clay pipe and lazily perusing a copy of the National
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
