| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: "Well, I left those women there," said Peter, dropping his hands on his
knees. "Mind you, I'd treated those women really well. I'd never given
either of them one touch all the time I had them. I was the talk of all
the fellows round, the way I treated them. Well, I hadn't been gone a
month, when I got a letter from the man I worked with, the one who had the
woman first--he's dead now, poor fellow; they found him at his hut door
with his throat cut--and what do you think he said to me? Why, I hadn't
been gone six hours when those two women skooted! It was all the big one.
What do you think she did? She took every ounce of ball and cartridge she
could find in that hut, and my old Martini-Henry, and even the lid off the
tea-box to melt into bullets for the old muzzle-loaders they have; and off
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
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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 Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: sight. The unimaginative would have called it gray. The
thoughtless would have pronounced it pink. It was
neither, and both; a soft, rosily-gray mixture of the
two, like the sky that one sometimes sees at winter
twilight, the pink of the sunset veiled by the gray of
the snow clouds. It was of a supple, shining cloth,
simple in cut, graceful in lines.
"There! We've found it. Let's pray that it will not
require too much altering."
But when it had been slipped over her head we groaned
at the inadequacy of her old-fashioned stays. There
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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 Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: plead for me! Thy son was not slain at birth."
"Perhaps it were well if he had been so slain, Baleka," said Unandi;
"then had many another man lived to look upon the sun who is now
dead."
"At the least, as an infant he was good and gentle, and thou mightest
love him, Mother of the Zulu."
"Never, Baleka! As a babe he bit my breast and tore my hair; as the
man is so was the babe."
"Yet may his child be otherwise, Mother of the Heavens! Think, thou
hast no grandson to comfort thee in thy age. Wilt thou, then, see all
thy stock wither? The king, our lord, lives in war. He too may die,
Nada the Lily |
