| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: forced to pause until the strangely savage, monotonous noise of the
native drums had ceased; but no Samoan, nor, I trust, white person,
changed his reverent attitude. Once, I remember a look of
surprised dismay crossing the countenance of Tusitala when my son,
contrary to his usual custom of reading the next chapter following
that of yesterday, turned back the leaves of his Bible to find a
chapter fiercely denunciatory, and only too applicable to the
foreign dictators of distracted Samoa. On another occasion the
chief himself brought the service to a sudden check. He had just
learned of the treacherous conduct of one in whom he had every
reason to trust. That evening the prayer seemed unusually short
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: to hide in Italy, for instance, you wouldn't think of saying that."
"Well! And suppose he has become morally disintegrated. You know
he was not a strong personality," the professor suggested moodily.
"My daughter's future is in question here."
Renouard thought that the love of such a woman was enough to pull
any broken man together - to drag a man out of his grave. And he
thought this with inward despair, which kept him silent as much
almost as his astonishment. At last he managed to stammer out a
generous -
"Oh! Don't let us even suppose. . ."
The professor struck in with a sadder accent than before -
Within the Tides |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: slowly collecting, fell from the eaves to the ground. Doss, not liking the
change from the cabin's warmth, ran quickly to the kitchen doorstep; but
his mistress walked slowly past him, and took her way up the winding
footpath that ran beside the stone wall of the camps. When she came to the
end of the last camp, she threaded her way among the stones and bushes till
she reached the German's grave. Why she had come there she hardly knew;
she stood looking down. Suddenly she bent and put one hand on the face of
a wet stone.
"I shall never come to you again," she said.
Then she knelt on the ground, and leaned her face upon the stones.
"Dear old man, good old man, I am so tired!" she said (for we will come to
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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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: stand. They seem to have set to work at their task methodically enough,
under the direction of their most literary monarch, Ptolemy
Philadelphus. Alexander the AEtolian collected and revised the
tragedies, Lycophron the comedies, Zenodotus the poems of Homer, and the
other poets of the Epic cycle, now lost to us. Whether Homer prospered
under all his expungings, alterations, and transpositions--whether, in
fact, he did not treat Homer very much as Bentley wanted to treat
Milton, is a suspicion which one has a right to entertain, though it is
long past the possibility of proof. Let that be as it may, the critical
business grew and prospered. Aristophanes of Byzantium wrote glossaries
and grammars, collected editions of Plato and Aristotle, aesthetic
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