| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: astride a pony or after a deer. Do you remember,
O Faun,' - he turned to Puck - 'the little altar I built
to the Sylvan Pan by the pine-forest beyond the brook?'
'Which? The stone one with the line from Xenophon?'
said Puck, in quite a new voice.
'No! What do I know of Xenophon? That was Pertinax -
after he had shot his first mountain-hare with an arrow -
by chance! Mine I made of round pebbles, in memory
of my first bear. It took me one happy day to build.'
Parnesius faced the children quickly.
'And that was how we lived on the Wall for two years -
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: room, biting her lip.]
[Enter LORD GORING and LORD CAVERSHAM.]
LORD GORING. [Expostulating.] My dear father, if I am to get
married, surely you will allow me to choose the time, place, and
person? Particularly the person.
LORD CAVERSHAM. [Testily.] That is a matter for me, sir. You would
probably make a very poor choice. It is I who should be consulted,
not you. There is property at stake. It is not a matter for
affection. Affection comes later on in married life.
LORD GORING. Yes. In married life affection comes when people
thoroughly dislike each other, father, doesn't it? [Puts on LORD
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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 Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: men and women. Now they would raise their palms half-closed
to heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture of
supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their
hands before them on the ground. As the double movement
passed and repassed along the line, the heads kept rising and
falling, like waves upon the sea; and still, as if in time to
these gesticulations, the hurried chant continued. I stood
spellbound, knowing that my life depended by a hair, knowing
that I had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.
Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came
forth a tall negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand
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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 Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: long drive," and the children ate it with far more relish than home
bread-and-milk was ever eaten.
"Now I'm doubting"" said Patrick, standing with his back to the cooking-stove
and with a corn-cob pipe in his mouth, "if it's the style to have
bread-and-milk at 'At Homes' in the city."
"Patrick," answered Tattine seriously, "we do not want this to be a city 'At
Home.' I don't care for them at all. Everybody stays for just a little while,
and everybody talks at once, and as loudly as they can, and at some of them
they only have tea and a little cake or something like that to eat," and
Tattine glanced at the kitchen-table over by the window with a smile and a
shake of the head, as though very much better pleased with what she saw there.
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