| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: that our works must deal exclusively with (what they call) the
average man, who was a prodigious dull fellow, and quite dead to
all but the paltriest considerations. I accept the issue. We can
only know others by ourselves. The artistic temperament (a plague
on the expression!) does not make us different from our fellowmen,
or it would make us incapable of writing novels; and the average
man (a murrain on the word!) is just like you and me, or he would
not be average. It was Whitman who stamped a kind of Birmingham
sacredness upon the latter phrase; but Whitman knew very well, and
showed very nobly, that the average man was full of joys and full
of a poetry of his own. And this harping on life's dulness and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: the heart of every son of man lies an angel; but some have their wings
folded. Wake yours! He is larger and stronger than another man's; mount
up with him!'
"But if he curses you, and says, 'I have eight millions of money, and I
care neither for God nor man!'--then make no answer, but stoop and write
before him." The stranger bent down and wrote with his finger in the white
ashes of the fire. Peter Halket bent forward, and he saw the two words the
stranger had written.
The stranger said: "Say to him: 'Though you should seek to make that name
immortal in this land; and should write it in gold dust, and set it with
diamonds, and cement it with human blood, shed from the Zambezi to the sea,
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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 King James Bible: strangers.
EXO 6:5 And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel,
whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant.
EXO 6:6 Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I
will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will
rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out
arm, and with great judgments:
EXO 6:7 And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a
God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which bringeth you
out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
EXO 6:8 And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I
King James Bible |
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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: since, and the chief features of which I mechanically pointed out to him.
"Jolly old church, that," said Beverly, as we reached my favorite corner
and brick wall. "Well, I'll not announce it!" he murmured gallantly.
"My dear man," I said, "Kings Port will do all the announcing for you
to-morrow."
XV: What She Came to See
But in this matter my prognostication was thoroughly at fault; yet
surely, knowing Kings Port's sovereign habit, as I had had good cause to
know it, I was scarce beyond reasonable bounds in supposing that the
arrival of Miss Rieppe would heat up some very general and very audible
talk about this approaching marriage, against which the prejudices of the
town were set in such compact array. I have several times mentioned that
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