| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: there often follows some improvement. Again, the sins of the
religious diarist are of a very formal pattern, and are told
with an elaborate whine. But in Pepys you come upon good,
substantive misdemeanours; beams in his eye of which he alone
remains unconscious; healthy outbreaks of the animal nature,
and laughable subterfuges to himself that always command
belief and often engage the sympathies.
Pepys was a young man for his age, came slowly to himself in
the world, sowed his wild oats late, took late to industry,
and preserved till nearly forty the headlong gusto of a boy.
So, to come rightly at the spirit in which the Diary was
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: head, read what was written on the fish-skin. She read it three times: she
then knew it by heart; so she put the fish into the cupboard --for it might
very well be eaten, and she never threw anything away.
Then the Reindeer related his own story first, and afterwards that of little
Gerda; and the Finland woman winked her eyes, but said nothing.
"You are so clever," said the Reindeer; "you can, I know, twist all the winds
of the world together in a knot. If the seaman loosens one knot, then he has a
good wind; if a second, then it blows pretty stiffly; if he undoes the third
and fourth, then it rages so that the forests are upturned. Will you give the
little maiden a potion, that she may possess the strength of twelve men, and
vanquish the Snow Queen?"
Fairy Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: groundwork of all rational understanding or action. They would
not turn the deaf and contemptuous ear with which the savage and
the superstitious receive the revelation of nature's mysteries.
Why should not, with so hopeful an audience, the experiment be
tried far and wide, of giving lectures on health, as supplementary
to those lectures on animal physiology which are, I am happy to
say, becoming more and more common? Why should not people be
taught--they are already being taught at Birmingham--something
about the tissues of the body, their structure and uses, the
circulation of the blood, respiration, chemical changes in the air
respired, amount breathed, digestion, nature of food, absorption,
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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 Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Let us try that next then," proposed the Wizard.
He scraped the embers of the burned powder out of the
basin and Glinda again filled the golden cup from the
drawer and placed it on top the steel pillar. Aurah
lighted it with her taper and Ozma bent over the basin
and murmured the long drawn syllable: "Oh-h-h!"
Instantly the island trembled and with a weird
groaning noise it moved upward -- slowly, very slowly,
but with a steady motion, while all the company stood
by in awed silence. It was a wonderful thing, even to
those skilled in the arts of magic, wizardry and
Glinda of Oz |
