| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: of freedom.
I had a common donkey pack-saddle - a BARDE, as they call it -
fitted upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects.
The doubled sack, my pilot-coat (for it was warm, and I was to walk
in my waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and an open basket
containing the white bread, the mutton, and the bottles, were all
corded together in a very elaborate system of knots, and I looked
on the result with fatuous content. In such a monstrous deck-
cargo, all poised above the donkey's shoulders, with nothing below
to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not yet been worn
to fit the animal, and fastened with brand-new girths that might be
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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 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: Accept my kind offices to thy other children as the only return
in my power for thy continual favors to me."
I used also sometimes a little prayer which I took from Thomson's Poems,
viz.:
"Father of light and life, thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good; teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit; and fill my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure;
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!"
The precept of Order requiring that every part of my business should
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: silenced, her past countenanced, and her present irradiated
by the family approval. Mrs. van der Luyden
shone on her with the dim benevolence which was her
nearest approach to cordiality, and Mr. van der Luyden,
from his seat at May's right, cast down the table glances
plainly intended to justify all the carnations he had sent
from Skuytercliff.
Archer, who seemed to be assisting at the scene in a
state of odd imponderability, as if he floated somewhere
between chandelier and ceiling, wondered at
nothing so much as his own share in the proceedings.
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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 The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: question. My demand upon Amanda was outrageous and I had no right
whatever to her love or loyalty. I must have that very clear. . . .
"This aristocratic life, as I conceive it, must be, except
accidentally here and there, incompatible with the domestic life.
It means going hither and thither in the universe of thought as much
as in the universe of matter, it means adventure, it means movement
and adventure that must needs be hopelessly encumbered by an
inseparable associate, it means self-imposed responsibilities that
will not fit into the welfare of a family. In all ages, directly
society had risen above the level of a barbaric tribal village, this
need of a release from the family for certain necessary types of
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