| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and the first
man I struck told me you had shipped on the "Grand Turk"
and gone to New Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up against
a building and cry. So help me goodness, I couldn't help it.
The man that owned the place come out cleaning up with a rag,
and said he didn't like to have people cry against his building,
and then it seemed to me that the whole world had turned
against me, and it wasn't any use to live any more; and coming
along an hour ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met Jim
Wilson and paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars on account;
and to think that here you are, now, and I haven't got a cent!
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: a rogue, and a hired literary spadassin, that to the best heads in
Scotland he seemed so useful, it may be so worthy, a man, that he be
provided with continually increasing employment. As tutor to James
I.; as director, for a short time, of the chancery; as keeper of the
privy seal, and privy councillor; as one of the commissioners for
codifying the laws, and again--for in the semi-anarchic state of
Scotland, government had to do everything in the way of
organisation--in the committee for promulgating a standard Latin
grammar; in the committee for reforming the University of St.
Andrew's: in all these Buchanan's talents were again and again
called for; and always ready. The value of his work, especially
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: free himself from that as from fear, indulgence, and jealousy; it is
a larger and more elaborate task, but it is none the less cardinal
and essential. Indeed it is more cardinal and essential. The true
knight has to be not only no coward, no self-pamperer, no egotist.
He has to be a philosopher. He has to be no hasty or foolish
thinker. His judgment no more than his courage is to be taken by
surprise.
"To subdue fear, desire and jealousy, is the aristocrat's personal
affair, it is his ritual and discipline, like a knight watching his
arms; but the destruction of division and prejudice and all their
forms and establishments, is his real task, that is the common work
|
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 Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: of sprouts and saplings and stones to be removed. Then I
reached our clearing just where the streams join in one; it
had a fine autumn smell of burning, the smoke blew in the
woods, and the boys were pretty merry and busy. Now I had a
private design:-
[Map which cannot be reproduced]
The Vaita'e I had explored pretty far up; not yet the other
stream, the Vaituliga (g=nasal n, as ng in sing); and up
that, with my wood knife, I set off alone. It is here quite
dry; it went through endless woods; about as broad as a
Devonshire lane, here and there crossed by fallen trees; huge
|
