| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: and behold! the bag lay there empty. And this was the day of the
steamer; he could see her smoke off Kalaupapa; and she must soon
arrive with a month's goods, tinned salmon and gin, and all manner
of rare luxuries for Kalamake.
"Now if he can pay for his goods to-day," Keola thought, "I shall
know for certain that the man is a warlock, and the dollars come
out of the Devil's pocket."
While he was so thinking, there was his father-in-law behind him,
looking vexed.
"Is that the steamer?" he asked.
"Yes," said Keola. "She has but to call at Pelekunu, and then she
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is
heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at
last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and
frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as
his God.
For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in
that fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be
seen what like abandonment befell myself.
CHAPTER 94
A Squeeze of the Hand.
That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the
Moby Dick |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Maids like these will ever make thee blest,
Wines like these will never harm thy brain.
1819.
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THE FAVOURED BEASTS.
Or beasts there have been chosen four
To come to Paradise,
And there with saints for evermore
They dwell in happy wise.
Amongst them all the Ass stands first;
He comes with joyous stride,
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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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: its open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of maids
looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and
the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered treetops
over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky.
The scene had a greatness that made it a different affair from
my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the door,
with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent
a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor.
I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place,
and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still
more of a gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be
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