| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: was staring from the ground with all his might, when "my poor
father," who had been searching for his boy frantically every
where, pounced upon him and hauled him away by the ear.
The tale seems an authentic recollection. He related it to me
many times, using the very same words. The grandfather honoured
me by a special and somewhat embarrassing predilection. Extremes
touch. He was the oldest member by a long way in that company,
and I was, if I may say so, its temporarily adopted baby. He had
been a pilot longer than any man in the boat could remember;
thirty--forty years. He did not seem certain himself, but it
could be found out, he suggested, in the archives of the
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: circle above circle of bare rock they have scaled; and, wandering there, in
those high regions, some have chanced to pick up on the ground one white
silver feather, dropped from the wing of Truth. And it shall come to
pass,' said the old man, raising himself prophetically and pointing with
his finger to the sky, 'it shall come to pass, that when enough of those
silver feathers shall have been gathered by the hands of men, and shall
have been woven into a cord, and the cord into a net, that in that net
Truth may be captured. Nothing but Truth can hold Truth.'
"The hunter arose. 'I will go,' he said.
"But wisdom detained him.
"'Mark you well--who leaves these valleys never returns to them. Though he
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: it had only sounded like croaking, till Sylvie explained it, but I could
now make out the "Wawt? Wawt?" quite distinctly.
"But why do they try to guess it before they see it?"
"I don't know," Sylvie said: "but they always do. Sometimes they begin
guessing weeks and weeks before the day!"
(So now, when you hear the Frogs croaking in a particularly melancholy
way, you may be sure they're trying to guess Bruno's next Shakespeare
'Bit'. Isn't that interesting?)
However, the chorus of guessing was cut short by Bruno, who suddenly
rushed on from behind the scenes, and took a flying leap down among the
Frogs, to re-arrange them.
Sylvie and Bruno |
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 Voice of the City by O. Henry: fell to conjugating the verb "amare," with Katy in
the objective case, though not because of antipathy.
She talked it over with her mother.
"Sure, I like him," said Katy. "He's more po-
liteness than twinty candidates for Alderman, and lie
makes me feel like a queen whin he walks at me side.
But what is he, I dinno? I've me suspicions. The
marnin'll coom whin he'll throt out the picture av his
baronial halls and ax to have the week's rint hung
up in the ice chist along wid all the rist of 'em."
"'Tis true," admitted Mrs. Dempsey, "that he
The Voice of the City |
