| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: hundred or by thirty of his fellows, I cannot but believe it
would have greatly precipitated the era of freedom and
justice. We feel the misdeeds of our country with so little
fervour, for we are not witnesses to the suffering they
cause; but when we see them wake an active horror in our
fellow-man, when we see a neighbour prefer to lie in prison
rather than be so much as passively implicated in their
perpetration, even the dullest of us will begin to realise
them with a quicker pulse.
Not far from twenty years later, when Captain John Brown was
taken at Harper's Ferry, Thoreau was the first to come
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: other three ferrymen were in the hut. Semyon, an old man of
sixty, lean and toothless, but broad shouldered and still
healthy-looking, was drunk; he would have gone in to sleep long
before, but he had a bottle in his pocket and he was afraid that
the fellows in the hut would ask him for vodka. The Tatar was ill
and weary, and wrapping himself up in his rags was describing
how nice it was in the Simbirsk province, and what a beautiful
and clever wife he had left behind at home. He was not more than
twenty five, and now by the light of the camp-fire, with his pale
and sick, mournful face, he looked like a boy.
"To be sure, it is not paradise here," said Canny. "You can see
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: on his features, that the crew was awed into silence. The men
stood motionless. The women, with wine-parched lips and cheeks
marbled with kisses, knelt down and began a prayer. Don Juan
could scarce help trembling when he saw splendor and mirth and
laughter and song and youth and beauty and power bowed in
reverence before Death. But in those times, in that adorable
Italy of the sixteenth century, religion and revelry went hand in
hand; and religious excess became a sort of debauch, and a
debauch a religious rite!
The Prince grasped Don Juan's hand affectionately, then when all
faces had simultaneously put on the same grimace--half-gloomy,
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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 Master of the World by Jules Verne: of some thousands of feet above sea-level, this is not possible. In
short, here is another riddle not easy to solve, and it is much
easier to point out the impossibility of false explanations, than to
discover the true one.
"Is it possible that a submarine boat is being experimented with
beneath the lake? Such boats are no longer impossible today. Some
years ago, at Bridgeport, Connecticut, there was launched a boat, The
Protector, which could go on the water, under the water, and also
upon land. Built by an inventor named Lake, supplied with two motors,
an electric one of seventy-five horse power, and a gasoline one of
two hundred and fifty horse power, it was also provided with wheels a
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