| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: potatoes, which she put upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of
ale. Placing the old candlestick beside this dainty repast, she
untied her bonnet, which hung limp and wet over her face, and
prepared to eat her supper. It was the first food that had
touched her lips since morning. There was enough of it,
however: there is not always. She was hungry,--one could see
that easily enough,--and not drunk, as most of her companions
would have been found at this hour. She did not drink, this
woman,--her face told that, too,--nothing stronger than ale.
Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale
life to keep her up,--some love or hope, it might be, or urgent
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Valley, he will have learned to be thankful for any light that he
could get--if not from the sky above, then from the blasted soil
beneath. Such was the red brilliancy of these lamps that they
appeared to build walls of fire on both sides of the track,
between which we held our course at lightning speed, while a
reverberating thunder filled the Valley with its echoes. Had the
engine run off the track,--a catastrophe, it is whispered, by no
means unprecedented,--the bottomless pit, if there be any such
place, would undoubtedly have received us. Just as some dismal
fooleries of this nature had made my heart quake there came a
tremendous shriek, careering along the valley as if a thousand
Mosses From An Old Manse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: from the bunkhouse came panting upon the scene. There were
both Americans and Mexicans among them. All were armed
and weapons were ready in their hands.
They paused a short distance from the two men. Eddie's
presence upon the side of the stranger saved Billy from instant
death, for Eddie was well liked by both his Mexican and
American fellow-workers.
"What's the fuss?" asked an American.
Eddie told them, and when they learned that the boss's
daughter had been spirited away and that the ranch foreman
was at the bottom of it the anger of the Americans rose to a
The Mucker |
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 Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: emphasis, as if to say: "At this point there is a full stop. At
least so it seems."
He gave a short colourless sketch of the history of the
Extraordinary Commission. He referred to the various crises
with which it had had to deal, beginning with the drunken
pogroms in Petrograd, the suppression of the combined
anarchists and criminals in Moscow (he mentioned that after
that four hours' struggle which ended in the clearing out of
the anarchists' strongholds, criminality in Moscow
decreased by 80 per cent.), to the days of the Terror when,
now here, now there, armed risings against the Soviet were
|
