| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: light came to my eyes in spite of the pains taken to blindfold me. Can
you see me at that final awakening, in 1819? The drama of 'The
Brothers at enmity' is a rose-water tragedy beside that of a mother
and daughter placed as we then were. But I braved them all, my mother,
my husband, the world, by public coquetries which society talked of,--
and heaven knows how it talked! You can see, my friend, how the men
with whom I was accused of folly were to me the dagger with which to
stab my enemies. Thinking only of my vengeance, I did not see or feel
the wounds I was inflicting on myself. Innocent as a child, I was
thought a wicked woman, the worst of women, and I knew nothing of it!
The world is very foolish, very blind, very ignorant; it can penetrate
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: into a bay or gulf on the land side, we were driven something out
of our course, and once or twice our men cried out, "Land to the
eastward!" but whether it was the continent or islands we could not
tell by any means. But the third day, towards evening, the sea
smooth, and the weather calm, we saw the sea as it were covered
towards the land with something very black; not being able to
discover what it was till after some time, our chief mate, going up
the main shrouds a little way, and looking at them with a
perspective, cried out it was an army. I could not imagine what he
meant by an army, and thwarted him a little hastily. "Nay, sir,"
says he, "don't be angry, for 'tis an army, and a fleet too: for I
Robinson Crusoe |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: hollies; authoritative canes drew ciphering upon the
path; and at night, from high upon the hills, a shepherd
saw lighted windows through the foliage and heard the
voice of city dignitaries raised in song.
The farm is older. It was first a grange of
Whitekirk Abbey, tilled and inhabited by rosy friars.
Thence, after the Reformation, it passed into the hands
of a true-blue Protestant family. During the covenanting
troubles, when a night conventicle was held upon the
Pentlands, the farm doors stood hospitably open till the
morning; the dresser was laden with cheese and bannocks,
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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 The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: year. It is much easier for me to find the flaws than the
remedies. Many of the words used in the original have no
written character or hieroglyphic to represent them, while
many others, though having a written form, are, like our
own slang expressions, not found in the dictionary.
Now let us turn to a more pleasant feature of this unwritten
nursery literature. The language is full of good rhymes,
and all objectionable features can be cut out without injury
to the rhyme, as it was not a part of the original, but added
by some more unscrupulous hand.
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