| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: themselves joined us, very cheery after a gallop from the Wazir-
Bagh. We talked of old times, old friendships, good swords that
were broken, names that had carried far, and Somers effaced himself
in the perfect manner of the British subaltern. It was a long,
pleasant gossip, and I thought Judy seemed rather glad to let her
husband dictate its level, which, of course, he did. I noticed when
the three rode away together that the Colonel was beginning to sit
down rather solidly on his big New Zealander; and I watched the dusk
come over from the foothills for a long time thinking more kindly
than I had spoken of Robert Harbottle.
I have often wondered how far happiness is contributed to a
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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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: tude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is
not company; and faces are but a gallery of pic-
tures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where
there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a
little: Magna civitas, magna solitudo; because in
a great town friends are scattered; so that there is
not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in
less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and
affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable
solitude to want true friends; without which the
world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense
Essays of Francis Bacon |
