| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last
his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal,
vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake,
and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent
dun-fish for a Saturday's dinner. Next Spanish hides, with the
tails still preserving their twist and the angle of elevation they
had when the oxen that wore them were careering over the pampas of
the Spanish Main -- a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost
hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices. I confess,
that practically speaking, when I have learned a man's real
disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: All I know of him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like one who
had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you
could well attend to. He wore a greatcoat in midsummer, being
affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of
carmine. He died in the road at the foot of Brister's Hill shortly
after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a
neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades
avoided it as "an unlucky castle," I visited it. There lay his old
clothes curled up by use, as if they were himself, upon his raised
plank bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl
broken at the fountain. The last could never have been the symbol
Walden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: footsteps as you went homewards--I may henceforth admire you at my
leisure, see you busy, moving, smiling, prattling! An endless joy!
You cannot imagine all the gladness it is to me to see you going
and coming; only a man can know that deep delight. Your least
movement gives me greater pleasure than a mother even can feel as
she sees her child asleep or at play. I love you with every kind
of love in one. The grace of your least gesture is always new to
me. I fancy I could spend whole nights breathing your breath; I
would I could steal into every detail of your life, be the very
substance of your thoughts--be your very self.
"Well, we shall, at any rate, never part again! No human alloy
Louis Lambert |
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 To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: ting insolently in the tap-room of the New Inn near
the harbour, where the captain had entered to buy
an ounce of tobacco. After paying for his pur-
chase with three half-pence extracted from the cor-
ner of a handkerchief which he carried in the cuff
of his sleeve, Captain Hagberd went out. As soon
as the door was shut the barber laughed. "The
old one and the young one will be strolling arm in
arm to get shaved in my place presently. The
tailor shall be set to work, and the barber, and the
candlestick maker; high old times are coming for
To-morrow |
