| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: shouldn't have had to wear this badge of idiocy. And to
think that it's got to be for a whole month longer! A year's
a mighty long while at best, but a year in company with a
full set of red whiskers is an eternity."
The road out of Tafelberg wound upward among tall
trees toward the pass that would lead him across the next
some excellent shooting. All his life Barney had promised
himself that some day he should visit his mother's native
land, and now that he was here he found it as wild and
beautiful as she had said it would be.
Neither his mother nor his father had ever returned to the
The Mad King |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: them all was God, even Fear and its dastardy, even crime and its
bacchanals. If we accept pantheism,--the religion of many a great
human genius,--who shall say where the greater reason lies? Is it with
the savage, free in the desert, clothed in his nudity, listening to
the sun, talking to the sea, sublime and always true in his deeds
whatever they may be; or shall we find it in civilized man, who
derives his chief enjoyments through lies; who wrings Nature and all
her resources to put a musket on his shoulder; who employs his
intellect to hasten the hour of his death and to create diseases out
of pleasures? When the rake of pestilence and the ploughshare of war
and the demon of desolation have passed over a corner of the globe and
Seraphita |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: ground. I believe sculptors are fine fellows when they are not
demons. O, I am now a salaried person, 600 pounds a year, to write
twelve articles in SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE; it remains to be seen if it
really pays, huge as the sum is, but the slavery may overweigh me.
I hope you will like my answer to Hake, and specially that he will.
Love to all. - Yours affectionately,
R. L. S.
(LE SALARIE).
Letter: To R. A. M. STEVENSON
SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACKS, NEW YORK, U.S.A. [OCTOBER 1887].
MY DEAR BOB, - The cold [of Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I
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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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: customary. And so is set on foot that strife, in truest sense
acceptable to heaven, and for the purposes of state most politic. It
is a strife in which not only is the pattern of a brave man's conduct
fully set forth, but where, too, each against other and in separate
camps, the rival parties train for victory. One day the superiority
shall be theirs; or, in the day of need, one and all to the last man,
they will be ready to aid the fatherland with all their strength.
Necessity, moreover, is laid upon them to study a good habit of the
body, coming as they do to blows with their fists for very strife's
sake whenever they meet. Albeit, any one present has a right to
separate the combatants, and, if obedience is not shown to the
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