| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: to gain.
R. DE COURCY.
XXXV
LADY SUSAN TO MR. DE COURCY
Upper Seymour Street.
I will not attempt to describe my astonishment in reading the note this
moment received from you. I am bewildered in my endeavours to form some
rational conjecture of what Mrs. Mainwaring can have told you to occasion
so extraordinary a change in your sentiments. Have I not explained
everything to you with respect to myself which could bear a doubtful
meaning, and which the ill-nature of the world had interpreted to my
Lady Susan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: than astronomic observers and inquirers. And in spite of all the huge
appliances and advantages of that great Museum, its inhabitants were
content, in physical science, as in all other branches of thought, to
comment, to expound, to do everything but open their eyes and observe
facts, and learn from them, as the predecessors whom they pretended to
honour had done. But so it is always. A genius, an original man
appears. He puts himself boldly in contact with facts, asks them what
they mean, and writes down their answer for the world's use. And then
his disciples must needs form a school, and a system; and fancy that
they do honour to their master by refusing to follow in his steps; by
making his book a fixed dogmatic canon; attaching to it some magical
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: no use for him; but we must do what we can with the fellow
meanwhile; he is good-humoured and honest, but inefficient,
idle himself, the cause of idleness in others, grumbling, a
self-excuser - all the faults in a bundle. He owes us thirty
weeks' service - the wretched Paul about half as much. Henry
is almost the only one of our employes who has a credit.
MAY 17TH.
Well, am I ashamed of myself? I do not think so. I have
been hammering Letters ever since, and got three ready and a
fourth about half through; all four will go by the mail,
which is what I wish, for so I keep at least my start. Days
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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 First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: And then - the sun!
Steadily, inevitably came a brilliant line, came a thin edge of
intolerable effulgence that took a circular shape, became a bow, became a
blazing sceptre, and hurled a shaft of heat at us as though it was a
spear.
It seemed verily to stab my eyes! I cried aloud and turned about blinded,
groping for my blanket beneath the bale.
And with that incandescence came a sound, the first sound that had reached
us from without since we left the earth, a hissing and rustling, the
stormy trailing of the aerial garment of the advancing day. And with the
coming of the sound and the light the sphere lurched, and blinded and
The First Men In The Moon |
