| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: and presumptuous. If there were such days in the calendar, a kind
and firm Providence would never permit the race of man to discover
them. It would rob life of one of its principal attractions, and
make fishing altogether too easy to be interesting.
Fisherman's luck is so notorious that it has passed into a proverb.
But the fault with that familiar saying is that it is too short and
too narrow to cover half the variations of the angler's possible
experience. For if his luck should be bad, there is no portion of
his anatomy, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet,
that may not be thoroughly wet. But if it should be good, he may
receive an unearned blessing of abundance not only in his basket,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: sudden show of interest that Wilbur failed to understand.
"An' where's her boats?" continued Kitchell. "I don't just quite
make out any boats at all." There was a long silence.
"Seems to be a sort of haze over her," observed Wilbur.
"I noticed that, air kinda quivers oily-like. No boats, no boats--
an' I can't see anybody aboard." Suddenly Kitchell lowered the
glass and turned to Wilbur. He was a different man. There was a
new shine in his eyes, a wicked line appeared over the nose, the
jaw grew salient, prognathous.
"Son," he exclaimed, gimleting Wilbur with his contracted eves; "I
have reemarked as how you had brains. I kin fool the coolies, but
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: I've not been a fisherman for nothing.' For it is no light matter,
as he reminded me, to be in an open boat, perhaps waist-deep with
herrings, day breaking with a scowl, and for miles on every hand lee-
shores, unbroken, iron-bound, surf-beat, with only here and there an
anchorage where you dare not lie, or a harbour impossible to enter
with the wind that blows. The life of a North Sea fisher is one long
chapter of exposure and hard work and insufficient fare; and even if
he makes land at some bleak fisher port, perhaps the season is bad or
his boat has been unlucky and after fifty hours' unsleeping vigilance
and toil, not a shop will give him credit for a loaf of bread. Yet
the steerage of the emigrant ship had been too vile for the endurance
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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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: persuaded, and was all the while of that opinion, that not so many, by
several thousands, had died; for it was observed, and I could give
several instances within the compass of my own knowledge, where a
servant had been taken sick, and the family had either time to send
him out or retire from the house and leave the sick person, as I have
said above, they had all been preserved; whereas when, upon one or
more sickening in a family, the house has been shut up, the whole
family have perished, and the bearers been obliged to go in to fetch
out the dead bodies, not being able to bring them to the door, and at
last none left to do it.
(3) This put it out of question to me, that the calamity was spread by
A Journal of the Plague Year |
