| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: BANISTER.
O heavens, it is kind master Friskiball!
Say sir, what hap hath brought you to this pass?
FRISKIBALL.
The same that brought you to your misery.
BANISTER.
Why would you not acquaint me with your state?
Is Banister your poor friend quite forgot:
Whose goods, whose love, whose life and all is yours?
FRISKIBALL.
I thought your usage would be as the rest,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: dropped on my head. From the other side of the
saloon, across the table, Ransome, with a duster in
his hand, stared open-mouthed. I don't think that
I looked wild. It is quite possible that I appeared
to be in a hurry because I was instinctively hasten-
ing up on deck. An example this of training be-
come instinct. The difficulties, the dangers, the
problems of a ship at sea must be met on deck.
To this fact, as it were of nature, I responded
instinctively; which may be taken as a proof that
for a moment I must have been robbed of my
The Shadow Line |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: Elijah says, "Lord, they have killed your prophets and destroyed
your altars, and I am left totally alone" [I Kings 19]. Here King
Ahab and others could have said, "Elijah, with talk like that you
are condemning all the people of God." However God had at the
same time kept seven thousand [I Kings 19]. How? Do you not also
think that God could now, under the papacy, have preserved his
own, even though the priests and monks of Christendom have been
teachers of the devil and gone to hell? Many children and young
people have died in Christ. For even under the anti-Christ,
Christ has strongly sustained baptism, the bare text of the gospel
in the pulpit, the Lord's Prayer, and the Creed. By this means he
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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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: myself, had any one told me that afternoon that I should live to
drag such a matter into print. But you see, sir, how you degrade
better men to your own level; and it is needful that those who are
to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt Damien and the devil's
advocate, should understated your letter to have been penned in a
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.
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