| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: tion and put her all comfy into a third-class carriage.
She lowered the window to say, 'You are a good young
man. If you see John--Captain Beard--without his
muffler at night, just remind him from me to keep his
throat well wrapped up.' 'Certainly, Mrs. Beard,' I
said. 'You are a good young man; I noticed how at-
tentive you are to John--to Captain--' The train
pulled out suddenly; I took my cap off to the old
woman: I never saw her again. . . . Pass the bottle.
"We went to sea next day. When we made that start
for Bankok we had been already three months out of
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: familiar with Sir Kay; they will find that in Chretien, the
seneschal, in addition to his undeniable qualities of
bravery and frankness, has less pleasing traits; he is
foolhardy, tactless, mean, and a disparager of others'
merit. He figures prominently in "Yvain" and "Lancelot".
His poetic history has not yet been written. His role in
the German romances has been touched upon by Dr. Friedrich
Sachse, "Ueber den Ritter Kei" (Berlin, 1860).
(31) No meat was eaten because it was the eve of Sunday.
(32) In the French epic poems and romances of adventure alike it
is customary for giants and all manner of rustic boors to
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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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: sides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are never
the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is
an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable
education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of
his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a
college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents,
and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to
its extreme -- a principle which should never be followed but with
circumspection -- to call in a contractor who makes this a subject
of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actually
to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said
Walden |
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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: house which could raise, and that very justly, the envy and the
comments of the passers-by. I think (to employ a phrase of yours
which I admire) it "should be attributed" to you that you have
never visited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had,
and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even
your pen perhaps would have been stayed.
Your sect (and remember, as far as any sect avows me, it is mine)
has not done ill in a worldly sense in the Hawaiian Kingdom. When
calamity befell their innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended
and took root in the Eight Islands, a QUID PRO QUO was to be looked
for. To that prosperous mission, and to you, as one of its
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