| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: with my Lord Buckhurst and his witty friend Sir Charles Sedley,
and a right merry house they kept for a time. But alas, ere the
summer had died there came a day when charming Nell and his
fickle lordship were friends no more, and parting from him, she
was obliged to revert to the playhouse again.
Now Nell Gwynn being not only a pretty woman, but moreover an
excellent actress, her return was welcomed by the town. Her
achievements in light comedy were especially excellent, and
declared entertaining to a rare degree. Pepys, who witnessed her
acting "a comical part," in the "Maiden Queen," a play by Dryden,
says he could "never hope to see the like done again by man or
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: now, but to be reached some day. There may be in her heart some
latent hope to meet there the love denied her here,--that she
shall find him whom she lost, and that then she will not be all-
unworthy. Who blames her? Something is lost in the passage of
every soul from one eternity to the other,--something pure and
beautiful, which might have been and was not: a hope, a talent,
a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his
birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost
hope to make the hills of heaven more fair?
Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived,
but this figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here
Life in the Iron-Mills |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: He saw that beside the black thing they had noticed, dry,
oblong willow-leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not
a forest but a settlement, but he did not wish to say so. And
in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards beyond the ditch
before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up
black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound. Nikita had
guessed right: it was not a wood, but a row of tall willows
with a few leaves still fluttering on them here and there.
They had evidently been planted along the ditch round a
threshing-floor. Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly
in the wind, the horse suddenly planted his forelegs above the
Master and Man |
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 Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: Cloete is dragged into the life-boat and the coxswain tumbles in.
Haul away on the grapnel, he shouts; the captain has shot himself.
. .
"Cloete was like a dead man - didn't care for anything. He let
that Stafford pinch his arm twice without making a sign. Most of
Westport was on the old pier to see the men out of the life-boat,
and at first there was a sort of confused cheery uproar when she
came alongside; but after the coxswain has shouted something the
voices die out, and everybody is very quiet. As soon as Cloete has
set foot on something firm he becomes himself again. The coxswain
shakes hands with him: Poor woman, poor woman, I'd rather you had
Within the Tides |
