| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears.
To give myself a countenance, as well as to have all ready for the
road when I should find occasion, I turned to quit scores with
Bellamy's two postillions. They had not the least claim on me, but
one of which they were quite ignorant - that I was a fugitive. It
is the worst feature of that false position that every gratuity
becomes a case of conscience. You must not leave behind you any
one discontented nor any one grateful. But the whole business had
been such a 'hurrah-boys' from the beginning, and had gone off in
the fifth act so like a melodrama, in explosions, reconciliations,
and the rape of a post-horse, that it was plainly impossible to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: bones, and did not yet despair; the army from Tunis had no doubt been
warned, and was coming.
But on the evening of the fifth day their hunger increased; they
gnawed their sword-belts, and the little sponges which bordered the
bottom of their helmets.
These forty thousand men were massed into the species of hippodrome
formed by the mountain about them. Some remained in front of the
portcullis, or at the foot of the rocks; the rest covered the plain
confusedly. The strong shunned one another, and the timid sought out
the brave, who, nevertheless, were unable to save them.
To avoid infection, the corpses of the velites had been speedily
Salammbo |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: of his son? I mean, for instance, if he knew that his son had drunk
hemlock, and the father thought that wine would save him, he would value
the wine?
He would.
And also the vessel which contains the wine?
Certainly.
But does he therefore value the three measures of wine, or the earthen
vessel which contains them, equally with his son? Is not this rather the
true state of the case? All his anxiety has regard not to the means which
are provided for the sake of an object, but to the object for the sake of
which they are provided. And although we may often say that gold and
Lysis |
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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: was some little way - beholding the place with wonder as we went.
Indeed, there was much for Scots folk to admire: canals and trees
being intermingled with the houses; the houses, each within itself, of
a brave red brick, the colour of a rose, with steps and benches of blue
marble at the cheek of every door, and the whole town so clean you
might have dined upon the causeway. Sprott was within, upon his
ledgers, in a low parlour, very neat and clean, and set out with china
and pictures, and a globe of the earth in a brass frame. He was a big-
chafted, ruddy, lusty man, with a crooked hard look to him; and he made
us not that much civility as offer us a seat.
"Is James More Macgregor now in Helvoet, sir?" says I.
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