| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled
with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve.
She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness
itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose.
A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward.
There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of
fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her.
The young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured
at my back. She looked at us all as if her life had depended
upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she
opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head,
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once
an example and fit instrument for introducing the same
absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws,
and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves
invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection
and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns,
and destroyed the lives of our people.
United States Declaration of Independence |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The consciousness
that I was free--no longer a slave--kept me cheerful under this,
and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in
New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts.
For instance, though colored children attended the schools,
and were treated kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum
refused, till several years after my residence in that city,
to allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its
hall. Not until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann refused to lecture in their
course while there was such a restriction, was it abandoned.
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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 Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: Muhammad Din turned round, in his father's arms, and said gravely:--
"It is true that my name is Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a
budmash. I am a MAN!"
From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din. Never again
did he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the
compound, we greeted each other with much state, though our
conversation was confined to "Talaam, Tahib" from his side and
"Salaam Muhammad Din" from mine. Daily on my return from office,
the little white shirt, and the fat little body used to rise from
the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid;
and daily I checked my horse here, that my salutation might not be
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