| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: it up, and once more Burning Daylight, King of the Klondike, was
sensationally featured in the Sunday supplements of the United
States. The Virgin had straightened up, so the feature-stories
ran, and correctly so. Never had she entered a Dawson City
dance-hall. When she first arrived from Circle City, she had
earned her living by washing clothes. Next, she had bought a
sewing-machine and made men's drill parkas, fur caps, and
moosehide mittens. Then she had gone as a clerk into the First
Yukon Bank. All this, and more, was known and told, though one
and all were agreed that Daylight, while the cause, had been the
innocent cause of her untimely end.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: took the document, put on his spectacles, coughed, spat, wrapped
himself up in his black greatcoat, and read the whole certificate
through from beginning to end. Then he turned it over and over, looked
at me, coughed again, fidgeted about in his chair, and said, 'We will
try to arrange this bit of business.'
"I trembled.
" 'I make fifty per cent on my capital,' he continued, 'sometimes I
make a hundred, two hundred, five hundred per cent.'
"I turned pale at the words.
" 'But as we are acquaintances, I shall be satisfied to take twelve
and a half per cent per--(he hesitated)--'well, yes, from you I would
Gobseck |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: escape, he searched the whole country after this manner: his soldiers,
coming to the borders of Eretria and spreading from sea to sea, joined
hands and passed through the whole country, in order that they might be
able to tell the king that no one had escaped them. And from Eretria they
went to Marathon with a like intention, expecting to bind the Athenians in
the same yoke of necessity in which they had bound the Eretrians. Having
effected one-half of their purpose, they were in the act of attempting the
other, and none of the Hellenes dared to assist either the Eretrians or the
Athenians, except the Lacedaemonians, and they arrived a day too late for
the battle; but the rest were panic-stricken and kept quiet, too happy in
having escaped for a time. He who has present to his mind that conflict
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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 St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: existence of such a person as myself, and will he deign to count
kinship with a soldier of Napoleon?'
'You speak English well,' observed my visitor.
'It has been a second language to me from a child,' said I. 'I had
an English nurse; my father spoke English with me; and I was
finished by a countryman of yours and a dear friend of mine, a Mr.
Vicary.'
A strong expression of interest came into the lawyer's face.
'What!' he cried, 'you knew poor Vicary?'
'For more than a year,' said I; 'and shared his hiding-place for
many months.'
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