| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: He began to gather up his papers. "Who can set a limit to the
ingenuity of an extravagant woman?"
"Yes, after all, who indeed?" I echoed as I recalled the
extravagance commemorated in Adelaide's anecdote of Miss Anvoy and
the thirty pounds.
CHAPTER IX
The thing I had been most sensible of in that talk with George
Gravener was the way Saltram's name kept out of it. It seemed to
me at the time that we were quite pointedly silent about him; but
afterwards it appeared more probable there had been on my
companion's part no conscious avoidance. Later on I was sure of
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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 Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: that indigenous Japanese sap, taste. But like grafts generally,
the foreign boughs were not much modified by their new life-blood,
nor was the tree in its turn at all affected by them. Connected with
it only as separable parts of its structure, the cuttings might have
been lopped off again without influencing perceptibly the condition
of the foster-parent stem. The grafts in time grew to be great
branches, but the trunk remained through it all the trunk of a
sapling. In other words, the nation grew up to man's estate, keeping
the mind of its childhood.
What is thus true of the Japanese is true likewise of the Koreans
and of the Chinese. The three peoples, indeed, form so many links in
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: gloves."
"Pere Grandet is buying quantities of staves; there will be plenty of
wine this year."
Monsieur Grandet never bought either bread or meat. His farmers
supplied him weekly with a sufficiency of capons, chickens, eggs,
butter, and his tithe of wheat. He owned a mill; and the tenant was
bound, over and above his rent, to take a certain quantity of grain
and return him the flour and bran. La Grande Nanon, his only servant,
though she was no longer young, baked the bread of the household
herself every Saturday. Monsieur Grandet arranged with kitchen-
gardeners who were his tenants to supply him with vegetables. As to
Eugenie Grandet |
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 Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: off, Baloo----"
Hathi shook all over at the idea, and Baloo said severely:
"Man-cub, that is not seemly to tell a Teacher of the Law.
Never have I been seen without my hide."
"Nay, I meant no harm, Baloo; but only that thou art, as it
were, like the cocoanut in the husk, and I am the same cocoanut
all naked. Now that brown husk of thine----" Mowgli was sitting
cross-legged, and explaining things with his forefinger in his
usual way, when Bagheera put out a paddy paw and pulled him
over backward into the water.
"Worse and worse," said the Black Panther, as the boy rose
The Second Jungle Book |
