| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: the accession of all the English monarchs since the Conqueror; but all
parents are earnestly anxious about the manners of their children.
Better Claude Duval than Kaspar Hauser. Laborers who are
contemptuously anti-clerical in their opinions will send their
daughters to the convent school because the nuns teach them some sort
of gentleness of speech and behavior. And peers who tell you that our
public schools are rotten through and through, and that our
Universities ought to be razed to the foundations, send their sons to
Eton and Oxford, Harrow and Cambridge, not only because there is
nothing else to be done, but because these places, though they turn
out blackguards and ignoramuses and boobies galore, turn them out with
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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: there. The old fellow, impenetrable and weary, was always there. He
shared his food, his repose, and his thoughts; he knew his plans,
guarded his secrets; and, impassive behind his master's agitation,
without stirring the least bit, murmured above his head in a soothing
tone some words difficult to catch.
It was only on board the schooner, when surrounded by white faces,
by unfamiliar sights and sounds, that Karain seemed to forget the
strange obsession that wound like a black thread through the gorgeous
pomp of his public life. At night we treated him in a free and easy
manner, which just stopped short of slapping him on the back, for
there are liberties one must not take with a Malay. He said himself
 Tales of Unrest |