| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: FAREWELL, fair day and fading light!
The clay-born here, with westward sight,
Marks the huge sun now downward soar.
Farewell. We twain shall meet no more.
Farewell. I watch with bursting sigh
My late contemned occasion die.
I linger useless in my tent:
Farewell, fair day, so foully spent!
Farewell, fair day. If any God
At all consider this poor clod,
He who the fair occasion sent
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: was made for an order empowering them to sell on the spot.
Announcements of the sale appeared in the papers, and Doublon
flattered himself that the inventory should be verified and the
auction take place on the 2nd of September.
By this time David Sechard owed Metivier five thousand two hundred and
seventy-five francs, twenty-five centimes (to say nothing of
interest), by formal judgment confirmed by appeal, the bill of costs
having been duly taxed. Likewise to Petit-Claud he owed twelve hundred
francs, exclusive of the fees, which were left to David's generosity
with the generous confidence displayed by the hackney coachman who has
driven you so quickly over the road on which you desire to go.
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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 Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: and his wife bred and fattened poultry and rabbits for sale.
After awhile it seemed to me that my oats came very short; I had the beans,
but bran was mixed with them instead of oats, of which there were very few;
certainly not more than a quarter of what there should have been.
In two or three weeks this began to tell upon my strength and spirits.
The grass food, though very good, was not the thing to keep up my condition
without corn. However, I could not complain, nor make known my wants.
So it went on for about two months; and I wondered that my master
did not see that something was the matter. However, one afternoon
he rode out into the country to see a friend of his, a gentleman farmer,
who lived on the road to Wells.
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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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: exciting, work, for I never was sure from one moment to another but that
he would be on me. I took comfort, however, from the reflection that a
lion rarely attacks a man--rarely, I say; sometimes he does, as you will
see--unless he is cornered or wounded. I must have been nearly an hour
hunting after that lion. Once I thought I saw something move in a clump
of tambouki grass, but I could not be sure, and when I trod out the
grass I could not find him.
"At last I worked up to the head of the kloof, which made a cul-de-sac.
It was formed of a wall of rock about fifty feet high. Down this rock
trickled a little waterfall, and in front of it, some seventy feet from
its face, rose a great piled-up mass of boulders, in the crevices and on
Long Odds |
