| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: Steel and the first expansions. It paid, I tell you, it paid,
When we came with our nine-knot freighters and collared the long-run trade!
And they asked me how I did it, and I gave 'em the Scripture text,
"You keep your light so shining a little in front o' the next!"
They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.
Then came the armour-contracts, but that was M'Cullough's side;
He was always best in the Foundry, but better, perhaps, he died.
I went through his private papers; the notes was plainer than print;
And I'm no fool to finish if a man'll give me a hint.
(I remember his widow was angry.) So I saw what the drawings meant,
Verses 1889-1896 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: was there. At the other end, the tenant of a cottage sank a
well, and there also the water came up boiling. It keeps
this end of the valley as warm as a toast. I have gone
across to the hotel a little after five in the morning, when
a sea fog from the Pacific was hanging thick and gray, and
dark and dirty overhead, and found the thermometer had been
up before me, and had already climbed among the nineties; and
in the stress of the day it was sometimes too hot to move
about.
But in spite of this heat from above and below, doing one on
both sides, Calistoga was a pleasant place to dwell in;
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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 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: the little brisk overseer downstairs, finding Paul eating in the cellar,
asked him if she could cook him anything on her little stove.
Next day his mother gave him a dish that could be heated up.
He took it into the pleasant, clean room to Polly. And very soon it
grew to be an established custom that he should have dinner with her.
When he came in at eight in the morning he took his basket to her,
and when he came down at one o'clock she had his dinner ready.
He was not very tall, and pale, with thick chestnut hair,
irregular features, and a wide, full mouth. She was like a small bird.
He often called her a "robinet". Though naturally rather quiet,
he would sit and chatter with her for hours telling her about his home.
Sons and Lovers |
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 Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: ruin, Eyraud and Gompard hit on a plan by which the woman should
decoy some would-be admirer to a convenient trysting-place.
There, dead or alive, the victim was to be made the means of
supplying their wants.
On further reflection dead seemed more expedient than alive,
extortion from a living victim too risky an enterprise. Their
plans were carefully prepared. Gabrielle was to hire a ground-
floor apartment, so that any noise, such as footsteps or the fall
of a body, would not be heard by persons living underneath.
At the beginning of July, 1889, Eyraud and Bompard were in
London. There they bought at a West End draper's a red and white
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
