| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: while the Samoans - men, women, and children - trooped in through
all the open doors, some carrying lanterns if the evening were
dark, all moving quietly and dropping with Samoan decorum in a wide
semicircle on the floor beneath a great lamp that hung from the
ceiling. The service began by my son reading a chapter from the
Samoan Bible, Tusitala following with a prayer in English,
sometimes impromptu, but more often from the notes in this little
book, interpolating or changing with the circumstance of the day.
Then came the singing of one or more hymns in the native tongue,
and the recitation in concert of the Lord's Prayer, also in Samoan.
Many of these hymns were set to ancient tunes, very wild 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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: bearing her away with murderous rapidity. When we had advanced a step
or two into an open space which lay before what seemed to be a grotto,
a sort of esplanade placed a hundred feet above the ocean, and
protected from its fury by buttresses of rock, we suddenly experienced
an electrical shudder, something resembling the shock of a sudden
noise awaking us in the dead of night.
We saw, sitting on a vast granite boulder, a man who looked at us. His
glance, like that of the flash of a cannon, came from two bloodshot
eyes, and his stoical immobility could be compared only to the
immutable granite masses that surrounded him. His eyes moved slowly,
his body remaining rigid as though he were petrified. Then, having
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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 The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Oh, Bulan," she cried, "you must not say that.
Why should you wish to die?"
"Because I love you, Virginia," he replied.
"And because, when you know what I am,
you will hate and loathe me."
On the girl's lips was an avowal of her own love,
but as she bent closer to whisper the words in his ear
there came the sound of men crashing through the jungle,
and as she turned to face the peril that she thought approaching,
von Horn sprang into view, while directly behind him came
her father and Sing Lee.
The Monster Men |
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 Protagoras by Plato: Well, he said, I admit that justice bears a resemblance to holiness, for
there is always some point of view in which everything is like every other
thing; white is in a certain way like black, and hard is like soft, and the
most extreme opposites have some qualities in common; even the parts of the
face which, as we were saying before, are distinct and have different
functions, are still in a certain point of view similar, and one of them is
like another of them. And you may prove that they are like one another on
the same principle that all things are like one another; and yet things
which are like in some particular ought not to be called alike, nor things
which are unlike in some particular, however slight, unlike.
And do you think, I said in a tone of surprise, that justice and holiness
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