| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: Almost at the same moment of time, and perhaps half a mile away towards
Gillane Ness, the figure of a man appeared for a blink upon a sandhill,
waving with his arms; and though he was gone again in the same flash,
the gulls in that part continued a little longer to fly wild.
Alan had not seen this, looking straight to seaward at the ship and
skiff.
"It maun be as it will!" said he, when I had told him, "Weel may yon
boatie row, or my craig'll have to thole a raxing."
That part of the beach was long and flat, and excellent walking when
the tide was down; a little cressy burn flowed over it in one place to
the sea; and the sandhills ran along the head of it like the rampart of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: if ye fail ye shall lose your prizes that ye have won so fairly,
and they go to them that shoot against you, man to man.
Do your best, lads, and if ye win this bout ye shall be glad
of it to the last days of your life. Go, now, and get you gone
to the butts."
Then the three archers of the King turned and went back to their booths,
and Robin and his men went to their places at the mark from which they
were to shoot. Then they strung their bows and made themselves ready,
looking over their quivers of arrows, and picking out the roundest
and the best feathered.
But when the King's archers went to their tents, they told
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: MRS. ERLYNNE. I have not told HER the truth, you mean.
LORD WINDERMERE. [Standing C.] I sometimes wish you had. I
should have been spared then the misery, the anxiety, the annoyance
of the last six months. But rather than my wife should know - that
the mother whom she was taught to consider as dead, the mother whom
she has mourned as dead, is living - a divorced woman, going about
under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you
now to be - rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money
to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk
what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my
wife. You don't understand what that means to me. How could you?
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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 Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: departure from the Malay Archipelago. Without premeditation, without
sorrow, without rejoicing, and almost without noticing it, I stepped
into the very different atmosphere of "An Outpost of Progress." I
found there a different moral attitude. I seemed able to capture new
reactions, new suggestions, and even new rhythms for my paragraphs.
For a moment I fancied myself a new man--a most exciting illusion. It
clung to me for some time, monstrous, half conviction and half hope as
to its body, with an iridescent tail of dreams and with a changeable
head like a plastic mask. It was only later that I perceived that in
common with the rest of men nothing could deliver me from my fatal
consistency. We cannot escape from ourselves.
Tales of Unrest |
