| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: had borne a part. He gave it up that moment, then and forever.
Only a trifle, perhaps, to us: his face grew a shade paler,--
that was all. But, somehow, the man's soul, as God and the
angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.
Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle,
which she placed on the floor, closing the door after her. She
had seen the look on his face, as he turned away: her own grew
deadly. Yet, as she came up to him, her eyes glowed. He was
seated on an old chest, quiet, holding his face in his hands.
"Hugh!" she said, softly.
He did not speak.
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: think that two men are better than one, or that your slaves are better than
you because they are stronger? Then please to begin again, and tell me who
the better are, if they are not the stronger; and I will ask you, great
Sir, to be a little milder in your instructions, or I shall have to run
away from you.
CALLICLES: You are ironical.
SOCRATES: No, by the hero Zethus, Callicles, by whose aid you were just
now saying many ironical things against me, I am not:--tell me, then, whom
you mean, by the better?
CALLICLES: I mean the more excellent.
SOCRATES: Do you not see that you are yourself using words which have no
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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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: the best favoured? And I wager he will never have the impudence to
propound honest Alan Ramsay's answer!"
Hereupon all three, and the old Miss Grant as well, cried out against
this sally, which (as I was acquainted with the verses he referred to)
brought shame into my own check. It seemed to me a citation
unpardonable in a father, and I was amazed that these ladies could
laugh even while they reproved, or made believe to.
Under cover of this mirth, Prestongrange got forth of the chamber, and
I was left, like a fish upon dry land, in that very unsuitable society.
I could never deny, in looking back upon what followed, that I was
eminently stockish; and I must say the ladies were well drilled to have
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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 Hamlet by William Shakespeare: The death I gaue him: so againe, good night.
I must be cruell, onely to be kinde;
Thus bad begins and worse remaines behinde
Qu. What shall I do?
Ham. Not this by no meanes that I bid you do:
Let the blunt King tempt you againe to bed,
Pinch Wanton on your cheeke, call you his Mouse,
And let him for a paire of reechie kisses,
Or padling in your necke with his damn'd Fingers,
Make you to rauell all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madnesse,
Hamlet |
