| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and
not leave her morning's work undone. Morning work! By the blushes
of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work
in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I
was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when
the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out
the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house?
I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the
grass, unless where man has broken ground.
It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which
the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: They encountered the usual number of savage beasts and reptiles;
but they met them with a courageous recklessness born of desperation,
and by virtue of the very madness of the chances they took, they
came through unscathed and with the minimum of delay.
Shortly after noon they reached the end of the plateau.
Before them was a drop of two hundred feet to the valley beneath.
To the left, in the distance, they could see the waters of the
great inland sea that covers a considerable portion of the area
of the crater island of Caprona and at a little lesser distance
to the south of the cliffs they saw a thin spiral of smoke arising
above the tree-tops.
Out of Time's Abyss |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: and fairier fight.
One Sunday morning, about five, the first brightness called
me. I rose and turned to the east, not for my devotions, but
for air. The night had been very still. The little private
gale that blew every evening in our canyon, for ten minutes
or perhaps a quarter of an hour, had swiftly blown itself
out; in the hours that followed not a sigh of wind had shaken
the treetops; and our barrack, for all its breaches, was less
fresh that morning than of wont. But I had no sooner reached
the window than I forgot all else in the sight that met my
eyes, and I made but two bounds into my clothes, and down the
|
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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: howling of names and numbers, the laughter and small talk of
cloaked society stepping slowly to its carriages, and the more
bourgeoisie vocalisation of the foot passengers who streamed
along and hummed little bits of music. The fog's denseness was
confusing, too, and at one moment it seemed that the little
narrow street would become inextricably choked and remain so
until some mighty engine would blow the crowd into atoms. It had
been a crowded night. From around Toulouse Street, where led the
entrance to the troisiemes, from the grand stairway, from the
entrance to the quatriemes, the human stream poured into the
street, nearly all with a song on their lips.
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
