| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: called to memory the day when the devil had looked forth; and at
the thought ice ran in his veins.
"A dreadful thing is the bottle," thought Keawe, "and dreadful is
the imp, and it is a dreadful thing to risk the flames of hell.
But what other hope have I to cure my sickness or to wed Kokua?
What!" he thought, "would I beard the devil once, only to get me a
house, and not face him again to win Kokua?"
Thereupon he called to mind it was the next day the HALL went by on
her return to Honolulu. "There must I go first," he thought, "and
see Lopaka. For the best hope that I have now is to find that same
bottle I was so pleased to be rid of."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: Cliff House. They are the great show of San Francisco. You take
a train which pulls up the middle of the street (it killed two
people the day before yesterday, being un-braked and driven
absolutely regardless of consequences), and you pull up somewhere
at the back of the city on the Pacific beach. Originally the
cliffs and their approaches must have been pretty, but they have
been so carefully defiled with advertisements that they are now
one big blistered abomination. A hundred yards from the shore
stood a big rock covered with the carcasses of the sleek
sea-beasts, who roared and rolled and walloped in the spouting
surges. No bold man had painted the creatures sky-blue or
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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 Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: in the family. One would have supposed that it was an event of the
greatest importance. Only Filippo, Marianina, Madame de Lanty, and an
old servant enjoyed the privilege of assisting the unknown to walk, to
rise, to sit down. Each one of them kept a close watch on his
slightest movements. It seemed as if he were some enchanted person
upon whom the happiness, the life, or the fortune of all depended. Was
it fear or affection? Society could discover no indication which
enabled them to solve this problem. Concealed for months at a time in
the depths of an unknown sanctuary, this familiar spirit suddenly
emerged, furtively as it were, unexpectedly, and appeared in the
salons like the fairies of old, who alighted from their winged dragons
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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 Professor by Charlotte Bronte: Hermon never drank the fresh dews of sunset more gratefully than
my feelings drank the bliss of this hour.
Frances rose, as if restless; she passed before me to stir the
fire, which did not want stirring; she lifted and put down the
little ornaments on the mantelpiece; her dress waved within a
yard of me; slight, straight, and elegant;, she stood erect on
the hearth.
There are impulses we can control; but there are others which
control us, because they attain us with a tiger-leap, and are our
masters ere we have seen them. Perhaps, though, such impulses
are seldom altogether bad; perhaps Reason, by a process as brief
The Professor |
