| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!
An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable
an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week,
or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British
guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength but
irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance
by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until
our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make
a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a
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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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: bunches from under the sea horizon closing the mouth of the river
between Orfordness and North Foreland. They all converge upon the
Nore, the warm speck of red upon the tones of drab and gray, with
the distant shores running together towards the west, low and flat,
like the sides of an enormous canal. The sea-reach of the Thames
is straight, and, once Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem
very uninhabited, except for the cluster of houses which is
Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden jetty where petroleum
ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the oil-storage tanks,
low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the edge of the
fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African huts imitated
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: tall steeple of Clockborough. His immediate ambition was to occupy
e lui seul the field of vision of that smokily-seeing city, and all
his movements and postures were calculated for the favouring angle.
The movement of the hand as to the pocket had thus to alternate
gracefully with the posture of the hand on the heart. He talked to
Clockborough in short only less beguilingly than Frank Saltram
talked to HIS electors; with the difference to our credit, however,
that we had already voted and that our candidate had no antagonist
but himself. He had more than once been at Wimbledon--it was Mrs.
Mulville's work not mine--and by the time the claret was served had
seen the god descend. He took more pains to swing his censer than
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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 Finished by H. Rider Haggard: kind of a thing to do; all of which happened before she, Nombe,
was born. She adds, according to Kaatje's interpretation, that
you met her again this afternoon, which, as I understand the
young woman has been long dead, seems so incomprehensible that I
wish you would explain."
"With reference to Heda," I said, ignoring the rest as unworthy
of notice, "I think you may make your mind easy. Zikali knows
that she is in my charge and I don't believe that he wants to
quarrel with me. Still, as you are uncomfortable here, the best
thing to do will be to get away as early as possible to-morrow
morning, where to we can decide afterwards. And now I am going
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