| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: She grinned cheerfully at us as she made a curtesy, and the
overseer remarked that she had just been back to the house
and had a baby.
"Poor, poor woman!" I cried, as we rode on, feeling for
some occult reason very angry with the Man of Wrath.
"And her wretched husband doesn't care a rap, and will
probably beat her <115> to-night if his supper isn't right.
What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes
when the women have the babies! "
"Quite so, my dear," replied the Man of Wrath, smiling condescendingly.
"You have got to the very root of the matter. Nature, while imposing this
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: know how beautiful are their lives; they are laying up their treasures
in heaven."
"Oh, how poor this country is!" she said, pointing to a field enclosed
by a dry stone wall, which was covered with droppings of cow's dung
applied symmetrically. "I asked a peasant-woman who was busy sticking
them on, why it was done; she answered that she was making fuel. Could
you have imagined that when those patches of dung have dried, human
beings would collect them, store them, and use them for fuel? During
the winter, they are even sold as peat is sold. And what do you
suppose the best dressmaker in the place can earn?--five sous a day!"
adding, after a pause, "and her food."
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: being lighted by narrow slits of windows cut through the massive
masonry. Above the room they had just left was another of the
same shape and size, but with an oak floor, sagging and rising
into hollows and hills, where the joist had rotted away beneath.
It was bare and empty, and not even a rat was to be seen. Above
was another room; above that, another; all the passages and
stairways which connected the one story with the other being
built in the wall, which was, where solid, perhaps fifteen feet
thick.
From the third floor a straight flight of steps led upward to a
closed door, from the other side of which shone the dazzling
Men of Iron |
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 A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Ah, far enough, my dear,
Far, far enough from here--
Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf
Too high for me to reach myself.
Reach down a hand, my dear, and take
These rhymes for old acquaintance' sake!
Yet you have farther gone!
"Can I get there by candlelight?"
So goes the old refrain.
I do not know--perchance you might--
But only, children, hear it right,
A Child's Garden of Verses |
