| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: with terror and had no time. She only felt her way from step to step,
dimly seeing my deliverance at the end of the journey. Marie told the
Vrouw Prinsloo nothing, except that she proposed to drug me if I would
not go undrugged. Then the vrouw must hide me as best she could, in the
grain-pit or elsewhere, or, if I had my senses about me, let me hide
myself. Afterwards she, Marie, would face the Boers and tell them to
find me if they wanted me.
The vrouw answered that she had now thought of a better plan. It was
that she should arrange with her husband and son and the Meyers, all of
whom loved me, that they should rescue me, or if need be, kill or
disable Pereira before he could shoot me.
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: Remember, Raoul, this! If Richelieu made the king, by
comparison, seem small, he made royalty great. The Palace of
the Louvre contains two things -- the king, who must die,
and royalty, which never dies. The minister, so feared, so
hated by his master, has descended into the tomb, drawing
after him the king, whom he would not leave alone on earth,
lest his work should be destroyed. So blind were his
contemporaries that they regarded the cardinal's death as a
deliverance; and I, even I, opposed the designs of the great
man who held the destinies of France within the hollow of
his hand. Raoul, learn how to distinguish the king from
Twenty Years After |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: of the seas told us we were dragging, and when we struck the
scoured channel we could tell by the feel of it that our two
anchors were fairly skating across. It was a deep channel, the
farther edge of it rising steeply like the wall of a canyon, and
when our anchors started up that wall they hit in and held.
Yet, when we fetched up, through the darkness we could hear the
seas breaking on the solid shore astern, and so near was it that
we shortened the skiff's painter.
Daylight showed us that between the stern of the skiff and
destruction was no more than a score of feet. And how it did
blow! There were times, in the gusts, when the wind must have
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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 Menexenus by Plato: This, O ye children and parents of the dead, is the message which they bid
us deliver to you, and which I do deliver with the utmost seriousness. And
in their name I beseech you, the children, to imitate your fathers, and
you, parents, to be of good cheer about yourselves; for we will nourish
your age, and take care of you both publicly and privately in any place in
which one of us may meet one of you who are the parents of the dead. And
the care of you which the city shows, you know yourselves; for she has made
provision by law concerning the parents and children of those who die in
war; the highest authority is specially entrusted with the duty of watching
over them above all other citizens, and they will see that your fathers and
mothers have no wrong done to them. The city herself shares in the
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