| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum: "Since you have seen me, what do you think of me?"
"I am sorry you asked that question," returned the prince; "for I must
confess you are a very frightful-looking creature, and not at all
agreeable to gaze upon."
"Ha! you are honest, as well as frank," exclaimed the king. "But
that is the reason I do not leave my kingdom, as you will readily
understand. And that is the reason I never permit strangers to come
here, under penalty of death. So long as no one knows the King of
Spor is a monster people will not gossip about my looks, and I am very
sensitive regarding my personal appearance. You will perhaps
understand that if I could have chosen I should have been born
The Enchanted Island of Yew |
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 Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: other directions. Nothing had been said for months of my going
to sea. But my attachment to my young tutor and his influence
over me were so well known that he must have received a
confidential mission to talk me out of my romantic folly. It was
an excellently appropriate arrangement, as neither he nor I had
ever had a single glimpse of the sea in our lives. That was to
come by and by for both of us in Venice, from the outer shore of
Lido. Meantime he had taken his mission to heart so well that I
began to feel crushed before we reached Zurich. He argued in
railway trains, in lake steamboats, he had argued away for me the
obligatory sunrise on the Righi, by Jove! Of his devotion to his
A Personal Record |
