| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: At the first letter-box I came to I stopped and reaching into my
breast-pocket I took out the letter - it was as if I were plucking
out my very heart - and dropped it through the slit. Then I went
straight on board.
I wondered what dreams I would have that night; but as it turned
out I did not sleep at all. At breakfast I informed Mr. Burns that
I had resigned my command.
He dropped his knife and fork and looked at me with indignation.
"You have, sir! I thought you loved the ship."
"So I do, Burns," I said. "But the fact is that the Indian Ocean
and everything that is in it has lost its charm for me. I am going
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: all bribery he refused to take advantage of certain profitable
enterprises which were started by means of his paper,--he! who had no
reluctance in compromising friends or in behaving with little decency
to mechanics under certain circumstances. Such meannesses, the result
of vanity and of ambition, are found in many lives like his. The
mantle must be splendid before the eyes of the world, and we steal our
friend's or a poor man's cloth to patch it.
Nevertheless, two months after the departure of the countess, Raoul
had a certain Rabelaisian "quart d'heure" which caused him some
anxiety in the midst of these triumphs. Du Tillet had advanced a
hundred thousand francs, Florine's money had gone in the costs of the
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: guess the fact, when you see at the mouth of each tube a little
scarlet flower, connected with the pink pulp which fills the tube.
For a further description of this largest and handsomest of our
Hydroid Polypes, I must refer you to Johnston, or, failing him, to
Landsborough; and go on, to beg you not to despise those pink, or
grey, or white lumps of jelly, which will expand in salt water into
exquisite sea-anemones, of quite different forms from any which we
have found along the rocks. One of them will certainly be the
Dianthus, (27) which will open into a furbelowed flower, furred
with innumerable delicate tentacula; and in the centre a mouth of
the most delicate orange, the size of the whole animal being
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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 Astoria by Washington Irving: during the summer and autumn, hunting the deer on snow-shoes
during the winter, and traversing the Rocky Mountains in the
spring, to trade for buffalo skins with the hunting tribes of the
Missouri. In these migrations they are liable to be waylaid and
attacked by the Blackfeet, and other warlike and predatory
tribes, and driven back across the mountains with the loss of
their horses, and of many of their comrades.
A life of this unsettled and precarious kind is apt to render man
selfish, and such Mr. Clarke found the inhabitants of this
village, who were deficient in the usual hospitality of Indians;
parting with everything with extreme reluctance, and showing no
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