| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Treasure Island |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: their arrangements are admirable. My children must always be bare-
legged and wear woollen socks. There shall be no swaddling nor
bandages; on the other hand, they shall never be left alone. The
helplessness of the French infant in its swaddling-bands means the
liberty of the nurse--that is the whole explanation. A mother, who is
really a mother, is never free.
There is my answer to your question why I do not write. Besides the
management of the estate, I have the upbringing of two children on my
hands.
The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial,
an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute. The soup warming
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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 Finished by H. Rider Haggard: themselves by thousands upon the British square, to be swept away
by case-shot and the hail of bullets. This battle, by the way,
the Zulus call, not Ulundi or Nodwengu, for it was fought in
front of Panda's old kraal of that name, but Ocwecweni, which
means--"the fight of the sheet-iron fortress." I suppose they
give it this name because the hedge of bayonets, flashing in the
sunlight, reminded them of sheet-iron. Or it may be because
these proved as impenetrable as would have done walls of iron.
At any rate they dashed their naked bodies against the storm of
lead and fell in heaps, only about a dozen of our men being
killed, as the little graveyard in the centre of the square
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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 A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: The narrow circle of her ideas grew more restricted than it already
was; the bellowing of the oxen, the chime of the bells no longer
reached her intelligence. All things moved silently, like ghosts. Only
one noise penetrated her ears; the parrot's voice.
As if to divert her mind, he reproduced for her the tick-tack of the
spit in the kitchen, the shrill cry of the fish-vendors, the saw of
the carpenter who had a shop opposite, and when the door-bell rang, he
would imitate Madame Aubain: "Felicite! go to the front door."
They held conversations together, Loulou repeating the three phrases
of his repertory over and over, Felicite replying by words that had no
greater meaning, but in which she poured out her feelings. In her
A Simple Soul |
