| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: flotilla here, but owing to the diseased condition and
reduced numbers of the employees, that was im-
possible, and I shall be obliged to content myself
with the Juno and the Avos, whose keel, as you
know, was laid in November, and is no doubt fin-
ished long since. These I shall fit with armaments
in Okhotsk. I shall place the enterprise I have
spoken of in your charge, sailing with you from
Sitka five days hence. From Okhotsk I desire that
you proceed to the Japanese settlements in the lower
Kurile Islands, take possession of them and bring
Rezanov |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: hundred cavalry ahead of their army which was following, never
expecting to find Castruccio in possession of the hill, nor were they
aware of his having seized the castle. Thus it happened that the
Florentine horsemen mounting the hill were completely taken by
surprise when they discovered the infantry of Castruccio, and so close
were they upon it they had scarcely time to pull down their visors. It
was a case of unready soldiers being attacked by ready, and they were
assailed with such vigour that with difficulty they could hold their
own, although some few of them got through. When the noise of the
fighting reached the Florentine camp below, it was filled with
confusion. The cavalry and infantry became inextricably mixed: the
The Prince |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: carefully, watching for the slippery places.
He had been walking about half an hour, perhaps, when he came to a
cross street. Here he noticed the tracks of a wagon, the trace
still quite fresh, as the slowly falling flakes did not yet cover it.
The tracks led out towards the north, out on to the hilly, open
fields.
Amster was somewhat astonished. It was very seldom that a carriage
came into this neighbourhood, and yet these narrow wheel-tracks
could have been made only by an equipage of that character. The
heavy trucks which passed these roads occasionally had much wider
wheels. But Amster was to find still more to astonish him.
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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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: other, but we--we who heard without the need of words, we who could
evoke between these two infinitudes the illusions that nourish youth,
--we pressed each other's hands at every change in the sheet of water
or the sheets of air, for we took those slight phenomena as the
visible translation of our double thought. Who has never tasted in
wedded love that moment of illimitable joy when the soul seems freed
from the trammels of flesh, and finds itself restored, as it were, to
the world whence it came? Are there not hours when feelings clasp each
other and fly upward, like children taking hands and running, they
scarce know why? It was thus we went along.
At the moment when the village roofs began to show like a faint gray
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