| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: liberty to give his name, but from what I heard I doubt if you
would care to have him to dinner in Beretania Street. "You
miserable little -------" (here is a word I dare not print, it
would so shock your ears). "You miserable little ------," he
cried, "if the story were a thousand times true, can't you see you
are a million times a lower ----- for daring to repeat it?" I wish
it could be told of you that when the report reached you in your
house, perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul
enough holy anger to receive it with the same expressions; ay, even
with that one which I dare not print; it would not need to have
been blotted away, like Uncle Toby's oath, by the tears of the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: For in his buried past this man had been the noted half-back of a
famous college, and one of his specialties had been running the
ball back after a catch through a broken field of opponents. The
lesson that experience had then thumped into him had since saved
his life on more than one occasion.
Having reached the tree, Bannister took immediate advantage of
the lie of the ground to snake forward unobserved for another
hundred feet. There was a dip from the foot of the tree, down
which he rolled into the sage below. He wormed his way through
the thick scrub brush to the edge of a dry creek, into the bed of
which he slid. Then swiftly, his body bent beneath the level of
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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 Apology by Plato: fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is
not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the
conceit that a man knows what he does not know? And in this respect only I
believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be
wiser than they are:--that whereas I know but little of the world below, I
do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience
to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonourable, and I will
never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. And
therefore if you let me go now, and are not convinced by Anytus, who said
that since I had been prosecuted I must be put to death; (or if not that I
ought never to have been prosecuted at all); and that if I escape now, your
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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 The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: "But Bagheera and the Bull that bought me," said Mowgli.
"I would not----"
His words were cut short by a roar and a crash in the thicket
below, and Bagheera, light, strong, and terrible as always,
stood before him.
"Therefore," he said, stretching out a dripping right paw,
"I did not come. It was a long hunt, but he lies dead in the
bushes now--a bull in his second year--the Bull that frees thee,
Little Brother. All debts are paid now. For the rest, my word is
Baloo's word." He licked Mowgli's foot. "Remember, Bagheera
loved thee," he cried, and bounded away. At the foot of the hill
The Second Jungle Book |
