| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear
Like a thin thread of gold against the sky,
And hoisted sail, and strained the creaking gear,
And bade the pilot head her lustily
Against the nor'west gale, and all day long
Held on his way, and marked the rowers' time with measured song.
And when the faint Corinthian hills were red
Dropped anchor in a little sandy bay,
And with fresh boughs of olive crowned his head,
And brushed from cheek and throat the hoary spray,
And washed his limbs with oil, and from the hold
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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 Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: ago I have reason to believe; so that, even without visiting
the grave of your great Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about
that time, I venture to predict that they have a Von Homber.
And the futurist group in China knows how to MAKE men work!"
CHAPTER XXIV
FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly
on to other things. I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen,
to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing.
I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure
of my drama; its scheme is none of mine. Often enough,
in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of Omar:
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: had overtaken all ironically his sense of proportion. If there had
been a ladder applied to the front of the house, even one of the
vertiginous perpendiculars employed by painters and roofers and
sometimes left standing overnight, he would have managed somehow,
astride of the window-sill, to compass by outstretched leg and arm
that mode of descent. If there had been some such uncanny thing as
he had found in his room at hotels, a workable fire-escape in the
form of notched cable or a canvas shoot, he would have availed
himself of it as a proof - well, of his present delicacy. He
nursed that sentiment, as the question stood, a little in vain, and
even - at the end of he scarce knew, once more, how long - found
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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 A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: eighty thousand francs. The old gentleman, wise from experience,
foresaw that by the time he was seventy Florentine would be of age,
probably engaged at the Opera, and, consequently, wanting all the
luxury of a theatrical star. Some days before the party mentioned by
Georges, Pere Cardot had spent the sum of forty-five thousand francs
in fitting up for his Florentine the former apartment of the late
Coralie. In Paris there are suites of rooms as well as houses and
streets that have their predestinations. Enriched with a magnificent
service of plate, the "prima danseuse" of the Gaiete began to give
dinners, spent three hundred francs a month on her dress, never went
out except in a hired carriage, and had a maid for herself, a cook,
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