| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: some reason for it when you learn that he was wounded in the
heel. "Like his Majesty the Emperor Napoleon himself," he
reminded his hearers, with assumed indifference. There can be no
doubt that the indifference was assumed, if one thinks what a
very distinguished sort of wound it was. In all the history of
warfare there are, I believe, only three warriors publicly known
to have been wounded in the heel--Achilles and Napoleon--demigods
indeed--to whom the familial piety of an unworthy descendant adds
the name of the simple mortal, Nicholas B.
The Hundred Days found Mr. Nicholas B. staying with a distant
relative of ours, owner of a small estate in Galicia. How he got
A Personal Record |
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 American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: through a gorge about eight miles long. To get to the bottom of
the gorge it makes two leaps, one of about one hundred and twenty
and the other of three hundred feet. I investigated the upper or
lesser fall, which is close to the hotel.
Up to that time nothing particular happens to the
Yellowstone--its banks being only rocky, rather steep, and
plentifully adorned with pines.
At the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid, ribbed with a
little foam, and not more than thirty yards wide. Then it goes
over, still green, and rather more solid than before. After a
minute or two, you, sitting upon a rock directly above the drop,
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