| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: think they must have dropped off but are afraid to look,
then renewed and fiercer prickings, shootings, and burnings.
I thought I must be very ill, for I had never known my legs
like that before. My father sitting beside me was engrossed
in the singing of a chorale that evidently had no end,
<89> each verse finished with a long-drawn-out hallelujah,
after which the organ played by itself for a hundred years--
by the organist's watch, which was wrong, two minutes exactly--
and then another verse began. My father, being the patron of
the living, was careful to sing and pray and listen to the sermon
with exemplary attention, aware that every eye in the little
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: exist, by that purest intellectual exercise about the things which do
exist, whereby alone the eye of the soul is nourished and brightened, as
Socrates says in the Phaedrus; and that the Noetic Gods will give to me
the perfect reason, and the Noeric Gods the power which leads up to
this, and that the rulers of the Universe above the heaven will impart
to me an energy unshaken by material notions and emancipated from them,
and those to whom the world is given as their dominion a winged life,
and the angelic choirs a true manifestation of divine things, and the
good daemons the fulness of the inspiration which comes from the Gods,
and the heroes a grand, and venerable, and lofty fixedness of mind, and
the whole divine race together a perfect preparation for sharing in
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: spirited horse and threw the bridle. He, too, peered closely into
Gale's face.
"My name's Ladd," he said. "Reckon I'm some glad to meet you again.?
Gale felt another grip as hard and strong as the other had been. He
realized he had found friends who belonged to a class of men whom he
had despaired of ever knowing.
"Gale--Dick Gale is my name," he began, swiftly. "I dropped into
Casita to-night hardly knowing where I was. A boy took me to that
hotel. There I met an old friend whom I had not seen for years.
He belongs to the cavalry stationed here. He had befriended a
Spanish girl--fallen in love with her. Rojas had killed this girl's
Desert Gold |
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: with a good enough grace ever to have won their favour. I should
have sacrificed my own comfort and not have gained their
patronage in return."
"Very likely--so you calculated your wisest plan was to follow
your own devices at once?"
"Exactly. I must follow my own devices--I must, till the day of
my death; because I can neither comprehend, adopt, nor work out
those of other people."
Hunsden yawned. "Well," said he, "in all this, I see but one
thing clearly-that is, that the whole affair is no business of
mine. "He stretched himself and again yawned. "I wonder what
The Professor |
