| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: or other for him, either a lump of sugar, a dram, a biscuit, or
something or other that was good. In the afternoon his frolics ran
another way; for then he would set the old man down upon the
ground, and dance about him, and make a thousand antic gestures;
and all the while he did this he would be talking to him, and
telling him one story or another of his travels, and of what had
happened to him abroad to divert him. In short, if the same filial
affection was to be found in Christians to their parents in our
part of the world, one would be tempted to say there would hardly
have been any need of the fifth commandment.
But this is a digression: I return to my landing. It would be
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.
From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of
traveling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from
house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with
satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of
great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and
was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's "History of New England
Witchcraft," in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently
believed.
He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and
simple credulity. His appetite for the marvelous, and his powers
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: the ancient and for ever closed fields of toil, but by entering upon new,
that she could alone serve her race and retain her own dignity and
virility. That not by bearing water and weaving linen, but by so training
and disciplining herself that she should be fitted to bear her share in the
labour necessary to the just and wise guidance of a great empire, and be
capable of training a race of men adequate to exercise an enlightened,
merciful, and beneficent rule over the vast masses of subject people--that
so, and so only, could she fulfil her duty toward the new society about
her, and bear its burden together with man, as her ancestresses of bygone
generations had borne the burden of theirs.
That in this direction, and this alone, lay the only possible remedy for
|
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 1984 by George Orwell: dull-brown crumbly stuff that tasted, as nearly as one could describe it,
like the smoke of a rubbish fire. But at some time or another he had tasted
chocolate like the piece she had given him. The first whiff of its scent
had stirred up some memory which he could not pin down, but which was
powerful and troubling.
'Where did you get this stuff?' he said.
'Black market,' she said indifferently. 'Actually I am that sort of girl,
to look at. I'm good at games. I was a troop-leader in the Spies. I do
voluntary work three evenings a week for the Junior Anti-Sex League. Hours
and hours I've spent pasting their bloody rot all over London. I always
carry one end of a banner in the processions. I always Iook cheerful and
1984 |
