| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: serviceable, being both able seamen, and very stout fellows.
We were now on shore in China; if I thought myself banished, and
remote from my own country at Bengal, where I had many ways to get
home for my money, what could I think of myself now, when I was
about a thousand leagues farther off from home, and destitute of
all manner of prospect of return? All we had for it was this:
that in about four months' time there was to be another fair at the
place where we were, and then we might be able to purchase various
manufactures of the country, and withal might possibly find some
Chinese junks from Tonquin for sail, that would carry us and our
goods whither we pleased. This I liked very well, and resolved to
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: its majesty is to be found only in the savage. There is never a
criminal who, though he might let his secrets fall with his head into
the basket of sawdust does not feel the purely social impulse to tell
them to somebody.
Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Faubourg Saint-
Marceau who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage--a
republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we
have heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of the
tenacity and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the
Guatimozin of the "Mountain," preserved an attitude unparalleled in
the annals of European justice.
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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 I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This
sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not
pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and
equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.
Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will
now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns
to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility
in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The
whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of
our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on
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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 Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: overheard Soutar and a comrade conversing in their oilskins.
The smooth sycophant of the cabin had wholly disappeared, and
the boy listened with wonder to a vulgar and truculent
ruffian. Of Soutar, I may say TANTUM VIDI, having met him in
the Leith docks now more than thirty years ago, when he
abounded in the praises of my grandfather, encouraged me (in
the most admirable manner) to pursue his footprints, and left
impressed for ever on my memory the image of his own
Bardolphian nose. He died not long after.
The engineer was not only exposed to the hazards of the
sea; he must often ford his way by land to remote and scarce
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