| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: part of his inmost life. Pure and beautiful as she was, almost
sacred in his regard, his heart dared to say--"I need her and claim
her!"
"Thee looks pale to-night, Richard," said Abigail, as they took
their seats at the supper-table. "I hope thee has not taken cold."
III.
"Will thee go along, Richard? I know where the rudbeckias grow,"
said Asenath, on the following "Seventh-day" afternoon.
They crossed the meadows, and followed the course of the stream,
under its canopy of magnificent ash and plane trees, into a brake
between the hills. It was an almost impenetrable thicket, spangled
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: their knowledge failed us, we generally managed to secure the services
of local guides. The roads, however, or rather the game tracks and
Kaffir paths which we followed, were terrible, for with the single
exception of that of Pereira for part of the distance, no wagon had ever
gone over them before. Indeed, a little later in the year they could
not have been travelled at all. Sometimes we stuck in bogs out of which
we had to dig the wheels, and sometimes in the rocky bottoms of streams,
while once we were obliged literally to cut our way through a belt of
dense bush from which it took us eight days to escape.
Our other chief trouble came from the lions, whereof there were great
numbers in this veld. The prevalence of these hungry beasts forced us
Marie |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: hereafter, she would have to sleep alone, in dreary solitude, as
she expressed it - my heart sank more than ever: I felt as if I
had been selfish and wrong to persist in leaving her; and when I
knelt once more beside our little bed, I prayed for a blessing on
her and on my parents more fervently than ever I had done before.
To conceal my emotion, I buried my face in my hands, and they were
presently bathed in tears. I perceived, on rising, that she had
been crying too: but neither of us spoke; and in silence we betook
ourselves to our repose, creeping more closely together from the
consciousness that we were to part so soon.
But the morning brought a renewal of hope and spirits. I was to
Agnes Grey |
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 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded
at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly
to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness.
There was something strange in my sensations, something
indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I
felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of
a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images
running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of
obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I
knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more
wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
