| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: firewood, later to be burned on the altar of our safety against
beasts. The moonlight was casting milky shadows over the river
and under the trees opposite. In those shadows gleamed many
fireflies. Overhead were millions of stars, and a little breeze
that wandered through upper branches.
But in Equatorial Africa the simple bands of velvet black, against
the spangled brightnesses that make up the visual night world,
must give way in interest to the other world of sound. The air
hums with an undertone of insects; the plain and hill and jungle
are populous with voices furtive or bold. In daytime one sees
animals enough, in all conscience, but only at night does he
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: Cassius.
CXLV
Remember that not the love of power and wealth sets us under
the heel of others, but even the love of tranquillity, of
leisure, of change of scene--of learning in general, it matters
not what the outward thing may be--to set store by it is to place
thyself in subjection to another. Where is the difference then
between desiring to be a Senator, and desiring not to be one:
between thirsting for office and thirsting to be quit of it?
Where is the difference between crying, Woe is me, I know not
what to do, bound hand and foot as I am to my books so that I
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: praise, and honoured with public monuments in the streets of
our commercial centres. This is very bewildering to the moral
sense. You have Joan of Arc, who left a humble but honest and
reputable livelihood under the eyes of her parents, to go a-
colonelling, in the company of rowdy soldiers, against the
enemies of France; surely a melancholy example for one's
daughters! And then you have Columbus, who may have pioneered
America, but, when all is said, was a most imprudent
navigator. His life is not the kind of thing one would like
to put into the hands of young people; rather, one would do
one's utmost to keep it from their knowledge, as a red flag of
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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 Options by O. Henry: took the young man's arm and pointed with her other hand to the door
of her room.
"Little Brother," she said, "go in there. The little fool you fished
out of the river is there waiting for you. Go on in. I'll give you
three minutes before I come. Potatoes is in there, waiting. Go on
in, Onions."
After he had tapped at the door and entered, Hetty began to peel and
wash the onion at the sink. She gave a gray look at the gray roofs
outside, and the smile on her face vanished by little jerks and
twitches.
"But it's us," she said, grimly, to herself, "it's us that furnishes
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