| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: highly absurd in the exposition of such toys to the outrages of
winter on a housetop. They would be more in keeping in a glass
case before a Nurnberg clock. Above all, at night, when the
children are abed, and even grown people are snoring under quilts,
does it not seem impertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures
winking and tinkling to the stars and the rolling moon? The
gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape-like heads; fitly enough
may the potentate bestride his charger, like a centurion in an old
German print of the VIA DOLOROSA; but the toys should be put away
in a box among some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children
are abroad again to be amused.
|
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 Youth by Joseph Conrad: our agitation. He motioned us forward with a com-
manding gesture, and went to take the wheel him-
self.
"Yes; that was the first thing we did--trim the yards
of that wreck! No one was killed, or even disabled, but
everyone was more or less hurt. You should have seen
them! Some were in rags, with black faces, like coal-
heavers, like sweeps, and had bullet heads that seemed
closely cropped, but were in fact singed to the skin.
Others, of the watch below, awakened by being shot out
from their collapsing bunks, shivered incessantly, and
Youth |
