| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: this Trappist regimen defective. And I am astonished, as I look
back, at the freshness of face and cheerfulness of manner of all
whom I beheld. A happier nor a healthier company I should scarce
suppose that I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak
upland, and with the incessant occupation of the monks, life is of
an uncertain tenure, and death no infrequent visitor, at Our Lady
of the Snows. This, at least, was what was told me. But if they
die easily, they must live healthily in the meantime, for they
seemed all firm of flesh and high in colour; and the only morbid
sign that I could observe, an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one
that served rather to increase the general impression of vivacity
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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 Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Semmering Stewart helped the American party off first and then
came back for Marie. Less keen eyes than the little Austrian's
would have seen his nervous anxiety to escape attention, once
they were out of the train and moving toward the gate of the
station. He stopped to light a cigarette, he put down the
hand-luggage and picked it up again, as though it weighed
heavily, whereas it was both small and light. He loitered through
the gate and paused to exchange a word with the gateman.
The result was, of course, that the Americans were in a sleigh
and well up the mountainside before Stewart and Marie were seated
side by side in a straw-lined sledge, their luggage about them, a
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: mythology its root in than English literature! Mythology is the
crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted,
before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and
which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated.
All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow
our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western
Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will
endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil
in which it thrives.
The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The
valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Shine having yielded
Walking |
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 Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: your own."
"Come, let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your vaults."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I
perceive you have an engagement. Luchesi--"
"I have no engagement;--come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold
with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are
insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing.
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