| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: directly on the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where
they had unloaded. He could see, too, and hear distinctly the
clink of money as it changed hands, the busy crowd of whites and
blacks shoving, pushing one another, and the chaffering and
swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more than anything
else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to him. He
was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars.
How they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that
pavement again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at
the mill, with a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: outside of the cup and the platter, while they left the inside full
of extortion and excess? It was not merely institutions which
required to be reformed, but men and women. The spirit of "Gil
Blas" had to be cast out. The deadness, selfishness, isolation of
men's souls; their unbelief in great duties, great common causes,
great self-sacrifices--in a word, their unbelief in God, and
themselves, and mankind--all that had to be reformed; and till that
was done all outward reform would but have left them, at best, in
brute ease and peace, to that soulless degradation, which (as in the
Byzantine empire of old, and seeming in the Chinese empire of to-
day) hides the reality of barbarism under a varnish of civilisation.
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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 The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: to go on like this. Their cursed constitutional system is the worst
possible government, and can never suit France. Louis XVIII. and
Monsieur Beugnot spoiled everything at Saint Ouen."
The Count, in despair, was preparing to retire to his estate,
abandoning, with dignity, all claims to repayment. At this moment the
events of the 20th March (1815) gave warning of a fresh storm,
threatening to overwhelm the legitimate monarch and his defenders.
Monsieur de Fontaine, like one of those generous souls who do not
dismiss a servant in a torrent of rain; borrowed on his lands to
follow the routed monarchy, without knowing whether this complicity in
emigration would prove more propitious to him than his past devotion.
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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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: But our ancestral adventures are beyond even the arithmetic of
fancy; and it is the chief recommendation of long pedigrees, that
we can follow backward the careers of our HOMUNCULOS and be
reminded of our antenatal lives. Our conscious years are but a
moment in the history of the elements that build us. Are you a
bank-clerk, and do you live at Peckham? It was not always so. And
though to-day I am only a man of letters, either tradition errs or
I was present when there landed at St. Andrews a French barber-
surgeon, to tend the health and the beard of the great Cardinal
Beaton; I have shaken a spear in the Debateable Land and shouted
the slogan of the Elliots; I was present when a skipper, plying
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