| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale
brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables
densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and
efflorescent photograph frames; and tall rosy-shaded
lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the palms.
"I don't think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted
up," said May, rising flushed from her struggle, and
sending about her a glance of pardonable pride. The
brass tongs which she had propped against the side of
the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband's
answer; and before he could restore them Mr.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: especial fat hot dull ladies who had out with her, to exasperation,
the terms for seaside lodgings, which struck her as huge, and the
matter of the number of beds required, which was not less
portentous: this in reference to places of which the names--
Eastbourne, Folkestone, Cromer, Scarborough, Whitby--tormented her
with something of the sound of the plash of water that haunts the
traveller in the desert. She had not been out of London for a
dozen years, and the only thing to give a taste to the present dead
weeks was the spice of a chronic resentment. The sparse customers,
the people she did see, were the people who were "just off"--off on
the decks of fluttered yachts, off to the uttermost point of rocky
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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 Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: on the subject of Mademoiselle Flore Brazier, the servant-mistress of
Jean-Jacques Rouget, so energetically termed a "slut" by the
respectable Madame Hochon. Everybody knew it was too ticklish a
subject with Max, ever to speak of it unless he began it; and hitherto
he had never begun it. To risk his anger or irritate him was
altogether too dangerous; so that even his best friends had never
joked him about the Rabouilleuse. When they talked of his liaison with
the girl before Major Potel and Captain Renard, with whom he lived on
intimate terms, Potel would reply,--
"If he is the natural brother of Jean-Jacques Rouget where else would
you have him live?"
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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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: and passage to another world, is holy and relig-
ious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature,
is weak. Yet in religious meditations, there is some-
times mixture of vanity, and of superstition. You
shall read, in some of the friars' books of mortifica-
tion, that a man should think with himself, what
the pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed,
or tortured, and thereby imagine, what the pains
of death are, when the whole body is corrupted,
and dissolved; when many times death passeth,
with less pain than the torture of a limb; for the
Essays of Francis Bacon |
