| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: found another little glass of pinkish fluid held towards
him. He took the dose. It was almost immediately
sustaining. Directly he had taken it he began to weep
naturally and refreshingly.
Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed
through his tears, a little foolishly. "But--two--
hun--dred--years ! " he said. He grimaced hysterically
and covered up his face again.
After a space he grew calm. He sat up, his hands
hanging over his knees in almost precisely the same
attitude in which Isbister had found him on the cliff
When the Sleeper Wakes |
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: "That young lady came and sat down by me. She said: 'Are you
French, Mr. Renouard?'"
He had breathed a whiff of perfume of which he said nothing either
- of some perfume he did not know. Her voice was low and distinct.
Her shoulders and her bare arms gleamed with an extraordinary
splendour, and when she advanced her head into the light he saw the
admirable contour of the face, the straight fine nose with delicate
nostrils, the exquisite crimson brushstroke of the lips on this
oval without colour. The expression of the eyes was lost in a
shadowy mysterious play of jet and silver, stirring under the red
coppery gold of the hair as though she had been a being made of
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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: of the day, and I thought this dreary, desert place was like a
paradise.
For all which, as the day drew on and nobody came near, I began to be
aware of an uneasiness that I could scarce explain. It seemed there
was trouble afoot; the sails of the windmill, as they came up and went
down over the hill, were like persons spying; and outside of all fancy,
it was surely a strange neighbourhood and house for a young lady to be
brought to dwell in.
At breakfast, which we took late, it was manifest that James More was
in some danger or perplexity; manifest that Alan was alive to the same,
and watched him close; and this appearance of duplicity upon the one
|
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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: hole he had cut in his door; but they fired back at him with an old
elephant gun, and the bullet pierced his side and he fell on the floor:--
because the innocent man suffers oftentimes for the guilty, and the
merciful man falls while the oppressor flourishes. Then his black servant
who was with him took him quickly in his arms, and carried him out at the
back of the hut, and down into the river bed where the water flowed and no
man could trace his footsteps, and hid him in a hole in the river wall.
And when the men broke into the hut they could find no white man, and no
traces of his feet. But at evening, when the black servant returned to the
hut to get food and medicine for his master, the men who were fighting
caught him, and they said, 'Oh, you betrayer of your people, white man's
|
