| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of the wonderful things which Tom saw
on his journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere; which all good little
children are requested to read; that, if ever they get to the
Other-end-of-Nowhere, as they may very probably do, they may not
burst out laughing, or try to run away, or do any other silly
vulgar thing which may offend Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.
Now, as soon as Tom had left Peacepool, he came to the white lap of
the great sea-mother, ten thousand fathoms deep; where she makes
world-pap all day long, for the steam-giants to knead, and the
fire-giants to bake, till it has risen and hardened into mountain-
loaves and island-cakes.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to
be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be
absolutely deaf. Then he proposed to me in broad daylight this
morning, in front of that dreadful statue of Achilles. Really, the
things that go on in front of that work of art are quite appalling.
The police should interfere. At luncheon I saw by the glare in his
eye that he was going to propose again, and I just managed to check
him in time by assuring him that I was a bimetallist. Fortunately I
don't know what bimetallism means. And I don't believe anybody else
does either. But the observation crushed Tommy for ten minutes. He
looked quite shocked. And then Tommy is so annoying in the way he
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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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: on the _defensive_, preventing him from injuring me, rather than
trying to injure him. I flung him on the ground several times,
when he meant to have hurled me there. I held him so firmly by
the throat, that his blood followed my nails. He held me, and I
held him.
All was fair, thus far, and the contest was about equal. My
resistance was entirely unexpected, and Covey was taken all aback
by it, for he trembled in every limb. _"Are you going to
resist_, you scoundrel?" said he. To which, I returned a polite
_"Yes sir;"_ steadily gazing my interrogator in the eye, to meet
the first approach or dawning of the blow, which I expected my
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: "But all these things do not matter now, these nights of flight
and pain. . . . We were in an open place near those great temples
at Paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky
bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus
far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can see it! My lady
was sitting down under a bush, resting a little, for she was very
weak and weary, and I was standing up watching to see if I could
tell the distance of the firing that came and went. They were still,
you know, fighting far from each other, with those terrible new
weapons that had never before been used: guns that would carry
beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do--What THEY would do
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