| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: along a low range of hills, and had lost his way. Since eight in the
morning he had wandered among long grasses, and ironstone kopjes, and
stunted bush, and had come upon no sign of human habitation, but the
remains of a burnt kraal, and a down-trampled and now uncultivated mealie
field, where a month before the Chartered Company's forces had destroyed a
native settlement.
Three times in the day it had appeared to him that he had returned to the
very spot from which he had started; nor was it his wish to travel very
far, for he knew his comrades would come back to look for him, to the
neighbourhood where he had last been seen, when it was found at the evening
camping ground that he did not appear.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: The Dryads come and throw the leathern ball
Along the reedy shore, and circumvent
Some goat-eared Pan to be their seneschal
For fear of bold Poseidon's ravishment,
And loose their girdles, with shy timorous eyes,
Lest from the surf his azure arms and purple beard should rise.
On this side and on that a rocky cave,
Hung with the yellow-belled laburnum, stands
Smooth is the beach, save where some ebbing wave
Leaves its faint outline etched upon the sands,
As though it feared to be too soon forgot
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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 Marie by H. Rider Haggard: cleared up thus.
We had reached a big kraal called Fokoti, on the Umkusi River, which
appeared to be almost deserted. We asked an old woman whom we met where
its people had gone. She answered that they had fled towards the
borders of Swaziland, fearing an attack from the Zulus, whose
territories began beyond this Umkusi River. It seemed that a few days
before a Zulu impi or regiment had appeared upon the banks of the river,
and although there was no war at the time between the Zulus and the
Tongas, the latter had thought it wise to put themselves out of reach of
those terrible spears.
On hearing this news we debated whether it would not be well for us to
Marie |
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 Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'I'm not afraid,' he had told his adviser; 'I'll get on for ten days.
I've not been a fisherman for nothing.' For it is no light matter,
as he reminded me, to be in an open boat, perhaps waist-deep with
herrings, day breaking with a scowl, and for miles on every hand lee-
shores, unbroken, iron-bound, surf-beat, with only here and there an
anchorage where you dare not lie, or a harbour impossible to enter
with the wind that blows. The life of a North Sea fisher is one long
chapter of exposure and hard work and insufficient fare; and even if
he makes land at some bleak fisher port, perhaps the season is bad or
his boat has been unlucky and after fifty hours' unsleeping vigilance
and toil, not a shop will give him credit for a loaf of bread. Yet
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