| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: must understand) has to be planted at first in baskets of
plaited cocoa-leaf. From four to ten natives were plaiting
these in the wood-shed. Four boys were digging up soil and
bringing it by the boxful to the verandah. Lloyd and I and
Belle, and sometimes S. (who came to bear a hand), were
filling the baskets, removing stones and lumps of clay;
Austin and Faauma carried them when full to Fanny, who
planted a seed in each, and then set them, packed close, in
the corners of the verandah. From twelve on Friday till five
P.M. on Saturday we planted the first 1500, and more than 700
of a second lot. You cannot dream how filthy we were, and we
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many
years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence
whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here
to be re-stated--an influence which some peculiarities in the
mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by
dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit--an
effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets, and
of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
brought about upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of
the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a
The Fall of the House of Usher |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: the type-written lecture. One promise I extorted--that I was
never again to be committed in ignorance; even for that, when I
saw how its extortion puzzled and depressed the Irrepressible,
my soul repented me; and in all else I suffered myself to be led
uncomplaining at his chariot wheels. The Irrepressible, did I
say? The Irresistible were nigher truth.
But the time to have seen me was when I sat down to Harry
Miller's lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller; he
had a gallant way of skirting the indecent which (in my case)
produced physical nausea; and he could be sentimental and
even melodramatic about grisettes and starving genius. I found
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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 Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod. Do
you persevere. Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves
and softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and
yielding; when a shrivelled heart has learned to expand and
contract and to beat under this discipline; when the brain has
capitulated--then, perhaps, passion may enter among the steel
springs of this machinery that turns out tears and affectations
and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a most
magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney
takes fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like
iron in the forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other,
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