| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: come to take her, and that is why she yelled so. Well, I got her down
to the waggon, and gave her a 'tot' of Cape smoke, and then, as soon as
it was ready, poured about a pint of beef-tea down her throat, made from
the flesh of a blue vilderbeeste I had killed the day before, and after
that she brightened up wonderfully. She could talk Zulu--indeed, it
turned out that she had run away from Zululand in T'Chaka's time--and
she told me that all the people whom I had seen had died of fever. When
they had died the other inhabitants of the kraal had taken the cattle
and gone away, leaving the poor old woman, who was helpless from age and
infirmity, to perish of starvation or disease, as the case might be.
She had been sitting there for three days among the bodies when I found
Long Odds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: HARDCASTLE. I tell you, she don't dislike you; and as I'm sure you
like her----
MARLOW. Dear sir--I protest, sir----
HARDCASTLE. I see no reason why you should not be joined as fast as
the parson can tie you.
MARLOW. But hear me, sir--
HARDCASTLE. Your father approves the match, I admire it; every
moment's delay will be doing mischief. So--
MARLOW. But why won't you hear me? By all that's just and true, I
never gave Miss Hardcastle the slightest mark of my attachment, or even
the most distant hint to suspect me of affection. We had but one
She Stoops to Conquer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: little tendency to dispose them to a reunion with the Catholic
Church.
They have some opinions peculiar to themselves about purgatory, the
creation of souls, and some of our mysteries. They repeat baptism
every year, they retain the practice of circumcision, they observe
the Sabbath, they abstain from all those sorts of flesh which are
forbidden by the law. Brothers espouse the wives of their brothers,
and to conclude, they observe a great number of Jewish ceremonies.
Though they know the words which Jesus Christ appointed to be used
in the administration of baptism, they have without scruple
substituted others in their place, which makes the validity of their
|
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 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to
look out the window. I had soon read all the tracts that
were left there, and examined where former prisoners had
broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard
the history of the various occupants of that room; for I
found that even there there was a history and a gossip which
never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably
this is the only house in the town where verses are
composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form,
but not published. I was shown quite a long list of young
men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
