| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: youth, able to take more exercise than I at thirty-three, and
gaining a stone's weight, a thing of which I am incapable. There
are you; has the man no gratitude? There is Smeoroch: is he
blind? Tell him from me that all this is
NOT THE TRUE BLUE!
I will think more of his prayers when I see in him a spirit of
PRAISE. Piety is a more childlike and happy attitude than he
admits. Martha, Martha, do you hear the knocking at the door? But
Mary was happy. Even the Shorter Catechism, not the merriest
epitome of religion, and a work exactly as pious although not quite
so true as the multiplication table - even that dry-as-dust epitome
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: know how useless it would be to try to give a more faithful
impression, and I will hold back from the attempt as far as I can.
Besides, my little story is itself an explanation of Simla.
Ingersoll Armour might have appeared almost anywhere else without
making social history. He came and bloomed among us in the
wilderness, and such and such things happened. It sounds too rude a
generalization to say that Simla is a wilderness; I hasten to add
that it is a waste as highly cultivated as you like, producing many
things more admirable than Ingersoll Armour. Still he bloomed there
conspicuously alone. Perhaps there would have been nothing to tell
if we had not tried to gather him. That was wrong; Nature in Simla
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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 Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: Babalatchi. "Without you I am nothing. All I have told you I
believe to be true. I have been safe for many years in the
hollow of your hand. This is no time to harbour suspicions. The
danger is very great. We should advise and act at once, before
the sun sets."
"Right. Right," muttered Lakamba, pensively.
They had been sitting for the last hour together in the audience
chamber of the Rajah's house, for Babalatchi, as soon as he had
witnessed the landing of the Dutch officers, had crossed the
river to report to his master the events of the morning, and to
confer with him upon the line of conduct to pursue in the face of
Almayer's Folly |
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 An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: Prince de Conti, and he owes everything to him. So long as you stay in
the house, you are safer here than anywhere else in France. Do not go
out. Pious souls will minister to your necessities, and you can wait
in safety for better times. Next year, on the 21st of January,"--he
could not hide an involuntary shudder as he spoke,--"next year, if you
are still in this dreary refuge, I will come back again to celebrate
the expiatory mass with you----"
He broke off, bowed to the three, who answered not a word, gave a last
look at the garret with its signs of poverty, and vanished.
Such an adventure possessed all the interest of a romance in the lives
of the innocent nuns. So, as soon as the venerable abbe told them the
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