| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: While with a joyless smile she turns away
The face, that map which deep impression bears
Of hard misfortune, carv'd in it with tears.
'No, no,' quoth she, 'no dame, hereafter living,
By my excuse shall claim excuse's giving.
Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break,
She throws forth Tarquin's name: 'He, he,' she says,
But more than 'he' her poor tongue could not speak;
Till after many accents and delays,
Untimely breathings, sick and short assays,
She utters this: 'He, he, fair lords, 'tis he,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: see him exiled even with some complacency. But Mataafa was Tupua
himself; and Tupua men would probably have murmured, and would
perhaps have mutinied, had he been harshly dealt with.
The native opposition, I say, was in a sense continuous. And it
kept continuously growing. The sphere of Brandeis was limited to
Mulinuu and the north central quarters of Upolu - practically what
is shown upon the map opposite. There the taxes were expanded; in
the out-districts, men paid their money and saw no return. Here
the eye and hand of the dictator were ready to correct the scales
of justice; in the out-districts, all things lay at the mercy of
the native magistrates, and their oppressions increased with the
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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 The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: by the road running through Shalford. Along this pleasant shady
way he felt suffficiently secure to resume his exercises in
riding with one hand off the handles, and in staring over his
shoulder. He came over once or twice, but fell on his foot each
time, and perceived that he was improving. Before he got to
Bramley a specious byway snapped him up, ran with him for half a
mile or more, and dropped him as a terrier drops a walkingstick,
upon the Portsmouth again, a couple of miles from Godalming. He
entered Godalming on his feet, for the road through that
delightful town is beyond dispute the vilest in the world, a mere
tumult of road metal, a way of peaks and precipices, and, after a
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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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: became the friend and secretary of Canalis he did a great amount of
labor for him, but by the end of eighteen months he had learned to
understand the barrenness of a nature that was poetic through literary
expression only. The truth of the old proverb, "The cowl doesn't make
the monk," is eminently shown in literature. It is extremely rare to
find among literary men a nature and a talent that are in perfect
accord. The faculties are not the man himself. This disconnection,
whose phenomena are amazing, proceeds from an unexplored, possibly an
unexplorable mystery. The brain and its products of all kinds (for in
art the hand of man is a continuation of his brain) are a world apart,
which flourishes beneath the cranium in absolute independence of
Modeste Mignon |
