| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: garden, and halted again before some entrance; and the retainer cried in a
loud voice, "Within there! I have brought Hoichi." Then came sounds of feet
hurrying, and screens sliding, and rain-doors opening, and voices of womeni
n converse. By the language of the women Hoichi knew them to be domestics
in some noble household; but he could not imagine to what place he had been
conducted. Little time was allowed him for conjecture. After he had been
helped to mount several stone steps, upon the last of which he was told to
leave his sandals, a woman's hand guided him along interminable reaches of
polished planking, and round pillared angles too many to remember, and over
widths amazing of matted floor,-- into the middle of some vast apartment.
There he thought that many great people were assembled: the sound of the
Kwaidan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: exclusion of themselves was incompatible with the free and unrestrained
principles they professed to live by. Wherefore, hereditary succession
in the early ages of monarchy could not take place as a matter of claim,
but as something casual or complemental; but as few or no records were
extant in those days, and traditional history stuffed with fables,
it was very easy, after the lapse of a few generations, to trump up some
superstitious tale, conveniently timed, Mahomet like, to cram hereditary
right down the throats of the vulgar. Perhaps the disorders which threatened,
or seemed to threaten, on the decease of a leader and the choice of a new one
(for elections among ruffians could not be very orderly) induced many
at first to favour hereditary pretensions; by which means it happened, as it
Common Sense |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: which makes a man as great in crime as he could have been in virtue.
The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on his
arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of
Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. The
London house had already been advised of the draft about to be made
upon them, he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent
(chosen at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave
Portsmouth with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to
Italy, and the passage-money had been paid in the name of the Conte
Ferraro. The smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He
had arranged matters so as to divert the search that would be made for
|
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 Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: When children are happy and lonely and good,
The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.
Nobody heard him, and nobody saw,
His is a picture you never could draw,
But he's sure to be present, abroad or at home,
When children are happy and playing alone.
He lies in the laurels, he runs on the grass,
He sings when you tinkle the musical glass;
Whene'er you are happy and cannot tell why,
The Friend of the Children is sure to be by!
He loves to be little, he hates to be big,
A Child's Garden of Verses |
