| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: Amangwane, sat one morning, after a long night march, in the hilly
country looking across a broad vale, which was sprinkled with trees like
an English park, at that mountain on the side of which Bangu, chief of
the Amakoba, had his kraal.
It was a very formidable mountain, and, as we had already observed, the
paths leading up to the kraal were amply protected with stone walls in
which the openings were quite narrow, only just big enough to allow one
ox to pass through them at a time. Moreover, all these walls had been
strengthened recently, perhaps because Bangu was aware that Panda looked
upon him, a northern chief dwelling on the confines of his dominions,
with suspicion and even active enmity, as he was also no doubt aware
Child of Storm |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: yourselves, has taken place.'
Sure enough, the green paint was in several places scratched and
broken; and one of the panels preserved the print of a nailed shoe.
The foot had slipped, however, and it was difficult to estimate the
size of the shoe, and impossible to distinguish the pattern of the
nails.
'The whole robbery,' concluded the Doctor, 'step by step, has been
reconstituted. Inductive science can no further go.'
'It is wonderful,' said his wife. 'You should indeed have been a
detective, Henri. I had no idea of your talents.'
'My dear,' replied Desprez, condescendingly, 'a man of scientific
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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 The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: run to make the revolution not worth preserving.*[(*)Thus
Rykov, President of the Supreme Council of Public Economy:
"There is a possibility of so constructing a State that in it
there will be a ruling caste consisting chiefly of administrative
engineers, technicians, etc.; that is, we should get a form of
State economy based on a small group of a ruling caste
whose privilege in this case would be the management of the
workersand peasants." That criticism of individual control, from
a communist, goes a good deal further than most of the
criticism from people avowedly in opposition.] The enormous
importance attached by everybody to this question of individual
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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 Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: fountain in which fish like Salammbo's were swimming; and then in the
background, against the wall of the temple, spread a vine, the
branches of which were of glass and the grape-bunches of emerald, the
rays from the precious stones making a play of light through the
painted columns upon the sleeping faces.
Matho felt suffocated in the warm atmosphere pressed down upon him by
the cedar partitions. All these symbols of fecundation, these
perfumes, radiations, and breathings overwhelmed him. Through all the
mystic dazzling he kept thinking of Salammbo. She became confused with
the goddess herself, and his loved unfolded itself all the more, like
the great lotus-plants blooming upon the depths of the waters.
Salammbo |
