| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: in a Tahitian story. A child fell sick, grew swiftly worse, and at
last showed signs of death. The mother hastened to the house of a
sorcerer, who lived hard by. 'You are yet in time,' said he; 'a
spirit has just run past my door carrying the soul of your child
wrapped in the leaf of a purao; but I have a spirit stronger and
swifter who will run him down ere he has time to eat it.' Wrapped
in a leaf: like other things edible and corruptible.
Or take an experience of Mr. Donat's on the island of Anaa. It was
a night of a high wind, with violent squalls; his child was very
sick, and the father, though he had gone to bed, lay wakeful,
hearkening to the gale. All at once a fowl was violently dashed on
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: All the countryside participated in the happiness of Jean-Pierre. He
remained sober, and, together with his quiet wife, kept out of the
way, letting father and mother reap their due of honour and thanks.
But the next day he took hold strongly, and the old folks felt a
shadow--precursor of the grave--fall upon them finally. The world is
to the young.
When the twins were born there was plenty of room in the house, for
the mother of Jean-Pierre had gone away to dwell under a heavy stone
in the cemetery of Ploumar. On that day, for the first time since his
son's marriage, the elder Bacadou, neglected by the cackling lot of
strange women who thronged the kitchen, left in the morning his seat
Tales of Unrest |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Gazing afar before him, many a mile
Of falling country, many fields and trees,
And cities and bright streams and far-off Ocean's smile:
I, O Melampus, halting, stand at gaze:
I, liberated, look abroad on life,
Love, and distress, and dusty travelling ways,
The steersman's helm, the surgeon's helpful knife,
On the lone ploughman's earth-upturning share,
The revelry of cities and the sound
Of seas, and mountain-tops aloof in air,
And of the circling earth the unsupported round:
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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 Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: say the sun shines in a fog; he's as gloomy as a cloudy day."
"But," I said to him, "you excite our curiosity without satisfying it.
Do you know what brought him there? Was it grief, or repentance; is it
a mania; is it crime, is it--"
"Eh, monsieur, there's no one but my father and I who know the real
truth. My late mother was servant in the family of a lawyer to whom
Cambremer told all by order of the priest, who wouldn't give him
absolution until he had done so--at least, that's what the folks of
the port say. My poor mother overheard Cambremer without trying to;
the lawyer's kitchen was close to the office, and that's how she
heard. She's dead, and so is the lawyer. My mother made us promise, my
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