| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: These are strange Questions.
IAILOR.
I doe not thinke she was very well, for now
You make me minde her, but this very day
I ask'd her questions, and she answered me
So farre from what she was, so childishly,
So sillily, as if she were a foole,
An Inocent, and I was very angry.
But what of her, Sir?
WOOER.
Nothing but my pitty;
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: Princes and kings who from it get
The model which to all they give.
All these are the results of the One (Tao).
2. If heaven were not thus pure, it soon would rend;
If earth were not thus sure, 'twould break and bend;
Without these powers, the spirits soon would fail;
If not so filled, the drought would parch each vale;
Without that life, creatures would pass away;
Princes and kings, without that moral sway,
However grand and high, would all decay.
3. Thus it is that dignity finds its (firm) root in its (previous)
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: amusement at her (or rather at her husband's) dinner-parties.
It is conceivable that even my grandmother was amenable to the
seductions of dress; at least, I find her husband inquiring
anxiously about `the gowns from Glasgow,' and very careful to
describe the toilet of the Princess Charlotte, whom he had
seen in church `in a Pelisse and Bonnet of the same colour of
cloth as the Boys' Dress jackets, trimmed with blue satin
ribbons; the hat or Bonnet, Mr. Spittal said, was a Parisian
slouch, and had a plume of three white feathers.' But all
this leaves a blank impression, and it is rather by reading
backward in these old musty letters, which have moved me now
|
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 Whirligigs by O. Henry: "Children! oh, children!" mused the Commissioner,
as though a new view had opened to him; "they raise
children!
"It's a lonesome country, Commissioner," said the
surveyor. "Can you blame 'em?"
"I suppose," continued the Commissioner, slowly, as
one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous
theory, "not all of them are tow-headed. It would not
be unreasonable, Mr. Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that
a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair."
"Brown and black, sure," said Ashe; "also red."
|
