| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: ship which brought the letter from Delagoa. It seemed that she was an
English-owned brig known as the Seven Stars, and that her captain, one
Richardson, proposed to sail back to the Bay on the morrow, that was the
third of July, or in other words, within twenty-four hours.
Twenty-four hours! And Port Elizabeth was one hundred and eighteen
miles away, and the Seven Stars might leave earlier if she had completed
her cargo and wind and weather served. Moreover, if she did leave, it
might be weeks or months before any other ship sailed for Delagoa Bay,
for in those days, of course, there were no mail boats.
I looked at my watch. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and from a
calendar we had, which gave the tides at Port Elizabeth and other South
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: contents would gradually arrange themselves amiably as a part of you,
and <159> the practice of your resolutions would lose its bitterness
by becoming a habit."
She shook her head. "Such things never lose their bitterness," she said,
"and that is why I don't let them cling to me right into the summer.
When May comes, I give myself up to jollity with all the rest of the world,
and am too busy being happy to bother about anything I may have resolved
when the days were cold and dark."
"And that is just why I love you," I thought.
She often says what I feel.
"I wonder," she went on after a pause, "whether men
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: happiness; or with having acted--however much I was mistaken--with
any other impulse than the one pure, single, earnest wish to be to
her, as far as in my inferior nature lay, the father she had lost.'
'Dear uncle,' cried Emma, 'I have known no parent but you. I have
loved the memory of others, but I have loved you all my life.
Never was father kinder to his child than you have been to me,
without the interval of one harsh hour, since I can first
remember.'
'You speak too fondly,' he answered, 'and yet I cannot wish you
were less partial; for I have a pleasure in hearing those words,
and shall have in calling them to mind when we are far asunder,
Barnaby Rudge |
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 Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: Go on--I see plenty plain enough, now, that them thieves
didn't get way with the di'monds. Why didn't they,
do you reckon?"
"Because they got chased away by them other two men
before they could pull the boots off of the corpse."
"That's so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain't
we to go and tell about it?"
"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can't you see? Look at it.
What's a-going to happen? There's going to be an inquest
in the morning. Them two men will tell how they heard
the yells and rushed there just in time to not save
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