| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And unremunerative years we search
To get where life begins, and still we groan
Because we do not find the living spark
Where no spark ever was; and thus we die,
Still searching, like poor old astronomers
Who totter off to bed and go to sleep,
To dream of untriangulated stars.
XIV
With conscious eyes not yet sincere enough
To pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuates
Between me and the glorifying light
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: CHAPTER XIV.
BUT ARCTICS CAN BE INHOSPITABLE, TOO
Stapi is a village consisting of about thirty huts, built of lava, at
the south side of the base of the volcano. It extends along the inner
edge of a small fiord, inclosed between basaltic walls of the
strangest construction.
Basalt is a brownish rock of igneous origin. It assumes regular
forms, the arrangement of which is often very surprising. Here nature
had done her work geometrically, with square and compass and plummet.
Everywhere else her art consists alone in throwing down huge masses
together in disorder. You see cones imperfectly formed, irregular
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: deal heartened up! See how they fall again to work."
This praise of Sir Daniel put a thought in the lad's head.
"Bennet," he said, "how came my father by his end?"
"Ask me not that," replied Hatch. "I had no hand nor knowledge in
it; furthermore, I will even be silent, Master Dick. For look you,
in a man's own business there he may speak; but of hearsay matters
and of common talk, not so. Ask me Sir Oliver - ay, or Carter, if
ye will; not me."
And Hatch set off to make the rounds, leaving Dick in a muse.
"Wherefore would he not tell me?" thought the lad. "And wherefore
named he Carter? Carter - nay, then Carter had a hand in it,
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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 A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: profession, you might enter the office of my son the notary, and
eventually succeed him. Therefore, work, patience, discretion,
honesty,--those are your landmarks."
"God grant that you may live thirty years longer to see your fifth
child realizing all we expect from him," cried Madame Clapart, seizing
uncle Cardot's hand and pressing it with a gesture that recalled her
youth.
"Now come to breakfast," replied the kind old man, leading Oscar by
the ear.
During the meal uncle Cardot observed his nephew without appearing to
do so, and soon saw that the lad knew nothing of life.
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