| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: Catholick countries about nine months after Lent, the markets
will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish
infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore
it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the
number of Papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child
(in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths
of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags
included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten
shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have
said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to
the bosom of Huckleberry Finn and was received with
a Scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept
home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town
was lost, forever and forever.
And that night there came on a terrific storm, with
driving rain, awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets
of lightning. He covered his head with the bedclothes
and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for he
had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was
about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: his wife, a spectacled rate collector with a bent back.... I
hear the talk about souls, the strange battered old phrases that
were coined ages ago in the seaports of the sun-dry Levant, of
balm of Gilead and manna in the desert, of gourds that give shade
and water in a thirsty land; I recall again the way in which at
the conclusion of the service the talk remained pious in form but
became medical in substance, and how the women got together for
obstetric whisperings. I, as a boy, did not matter, and might
overhear.
If Bladesover is my key for the explanation of England, I think
my invincible persuasion that I understand Russia was engendered
|
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 Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: Then he opened his eyes and sat up, and, lo and behold! there he
was, under the oak-tree whence he had started in the first place.
There lay his fiddle, just as he had left it. He picked it up and
ran his fingers over the strings--trum, twang! Then he got to
his feet and brushed the dirt and grass from his knees. He tucked
his fiddle under his arm, and off he stepped upon the way he had
been going at first.
"Just to think!" said he, "I would either have been the richest
man in the world, or else I would have been a king, if it had not
been for Ill-Luck."
And that is the way we all of us talk.
|
