| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: something else, demanded information about India. I gave him
some facts about wages.
"Oh, hell!" said he, cheerfully, "that wouldn't keep me in cigars
for a month."
Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon
himself to pity the natives of India. "Heathens," he called
them--this woolly one, whose race has been the butt of every
comedy on the native stage since the beginning. And I turned and
saw by the head upon his shoulders that he was a Yoruba man, if
there be any truth in ethnological castes. He did his thinking
in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race type had
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: than the devil - God is above the devil, and therefore we pray to
God to tread him down under our feet, and enable us to resist his
temptations and quench his fiery darts." "But," says he again, "if
God much stronger, much might as the wicked devil, why God no kill
the devil, so make him no more do wicked?" I was strangely
surprised at this question; and, after all, though I was now an old
man, yet I was but a young doctor, and ill qualified for a casuist
or a solver of difficulties; and at first I could not tell what to
say; so I pretended not to hear him, and asked him what he said;
but he was too earnest for an answer to forget his question, so
that he repeated it in the very same broken words as above. By
Robinson Crusoe |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this
destiny, and that is to respect my silence." Utterson was amazed;
the dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had
returned to his old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect
had smiled with every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age;
and now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole
tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and unprepared a change
pointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon's manner and words,
there must lie for it some deeper ground.
A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something
less than a fortnight he was dead. The night after the funeral,
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
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 The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: pected an adding machine to understand higher mathe-
matics.
Jonas Prim loved his daughter. There was nothing,
within reason, that money could buy which he would
not have given her for the asking; but Jonas Prim's love,
as his life, was expressed in dollar signs, while the love
which Abigail craved is better expressed by any other
means at the command of man.
Being misunderstood and, to all outward appearances
of sentiment and affection, unloved had not in any way
embittered Abigail's remarkably joyous temperament.
The Oakdale Affair |
