| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: that he revisited my camp in disguise?"
"Even so," replied Saladin. "I was physician enough to know
that, unless the wounds of his bleeding honour were stanched, the
days of his life must be few. His disguise was more easily
penetrated than I had expected from the success of my own."
"An accident," said King Richard (probably alluding to the
circumstance of his applying his lips to the wound of the
supposed Nubian), "let me first know that his skin was
artificially discoloured; and that hint once taken, detection
became easy, for his form and person are not to be forgotten. I
confidently expect that he will do battle on the morrow."
|
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 What is Man? by Mark Twain: who was never defeated, the general who never held a council of
war, the only general who ever commanded a connected battle-front
twelve hundred miles long, the smith who welded together the
broken parts of a great republic and re-established it where it
is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies present and to
come, was really a person of no serious consequence to these
people. To them, with their training, my General was only a man,
after all, while their Prince was clearly much more than that--a
being of a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution, and
being of no more blood and kinship with men than are the serene
eternal lights of the firmament with the poor dull tallow candles
 What is Man? |