| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: de Todos los Santos, or All Saints' Bay, in about twenty-two days
after. And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable
of all conditions of life; and what to do next with myself I was to
consider.
The generous treatment the captain gave me I can never enough
remember: he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me
twenty ducats for the leopard's skin, and forty for the lion's
skin, which I had in my boat, and caused everything I had in the
ship to be punctually delivered to me; and what I was willing to
sell he bought of me, such as the case of bottles, two of my guns,
and a piece of the lump of beeswax - for I had made candles of the
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Never," replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but
into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is
too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I
might endure his agony as well as mine!"
"Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly,
proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold, "Speak; and give
your child a father!"
"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death, but
responding to this voice, which she too surely recognised. "And
The Scarlet Letter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: ready to die for fear, and fell down as dead with the very terror;
but when they saw the creature dead, and sunk in the water, and
that I made signs to them to come to the shore, they took heart and
came, and began to search for the creature. I found him by his
blood staining the water; and by the help of a rope, which I slung
round him, and gave the negroes to haul, they dragged him on shore,
and found that it was a most curious leopard, spotted, and fine to
an admirable degree; and the negroes held up their hands with
admiration, to think what it was I had killed him with.
The other creature, frighted with the flash of fire and the noise
of the gun, swam on shore, and ran up directly to the mountains
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: windy schemes and empty hopes, till he could neither live on such
unwholesome trash, nor stomach more substantial food. But,
withal, this Peter Goldthwaite, crack-brained simpleton as,
perhaps, he was, might have cut a very brilliant figure in the
world, had he employed his imagination in the airy business of
poetry, instead of making it a demon of mischief in mercantile
pursuits. After all, he was no bad fellow, but as harmless as a
child, and as honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman
which nature meant him for, as an irregular life and depressed
circumstances will permit any man to be.
As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth, looking round
Twice Told Tales |
