| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: over some novel from the "Library;" and then returns to tea and
shrimps, and lodgings of which the fragrance is not unsuggestive,
sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa
of England! That is a sad sight to some who think about the
present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad sight to
see your old father--tradesman, or clerk, or what not--who has
done good work in his day, and hopes to do some more, sitting by
your old mother, who has done good work in her day--among the
rest, that heaviest work of all, the bringing you into the world
and keeping you in it till now--honest, kindly, cheerful folk
enough, and not inefficient in their own calling; though an
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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 Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: "Then you really were thinking of your secrets?" he went on, laughing.
"No, I was thinking of yours. My own, I know."
"But perhaps my secrets are yours, and yours mine," cried the young
man, softly seizing Mademoiselle de Fontaine's hand and drawing it
through his arm.
After walking a few steps they found themselves under a clump of trees
which the hues of the sinking sun wrapped in a haze of red and brown.
This touch of natural magic lent a certain solemnity to the moment.
The young man's free and eager action, and, above all, the throbbing
of his surging heart, whose hurried beating spoke to Emilie's arm,
stirred her to an emotion that was all the more disturbing because it
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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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: drawing and the handling of the brush as was required in the
times of Raphael, Titian, and Rubens. But on this point I can
only speak from hearsay, and am quite willing to end here my
series of illustrations, fearing that I may already have been
wrongly set down as a lavulator temporis acti. Not the idle
praising of times gone by, but the getting a lesson from them
which may be of use to us, has been my object. And I believe
enough has been said to show that the great complexity of modern
life, with its multiplicity of demands upon our energy, has got
us into a state of chronic hurry, the results of which are
everywhere to be seen in the shape of less thorough workmanship
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: the Night to take off their spells. They were cruel. They asked me
many questions which they would never allow me to answer.
They changed my words between my teeth till I wept. Then they
led me into a hut and covered the floor with hot stones and dashed
water on the stones, and sang charms till the sweat poured off me
like water. I slept. When I waked, my own spirit -not the strange,
shouting thing - was back in my body, and I was like a cool bright
stone on the shingle between the sea and the sunshine. The
magicians came to hear me - women and men - each wearing a
Magic Knife. Their Priestess was their Ears and their Mouth.
'I spoke. I spoke many words that went smoothly along like
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