| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: the bullets. Step by step John Dunn and his people were thrust back,
fighting gallantly against overwhelming odds. They were level with us,
not a quarter of a mile to our left. They were pushed past us. They
vanished among the bush behind us, and a long while passed before ever I
heard what became of them, for we met no more that day.
Now, the horns having done their work and wrapped themselves round
Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not
Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his
charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment,
Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it,
were met by Umbelazi's regiments springing forward to repel the
Child of Storm |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: energy needed for the noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am
going where a man steers his destiny as he pleases.
These great resolutions were formed in the little room in the lodging-
house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunting the Bal Musard,
flirting with girls of the town, and leading a careless and apparently
reckless life. Our plans and arguments long floated in the air.
Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who led us to the
margin of the precipice or the torrent, who made us sound it, and
showed us beforehand what our fate would be if we let ourselves fall
into it. It was he who put us on our guard against the time-bargains a
man makes with poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting
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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 New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Frail bark! I loose my anchored mind
And large, before the prosperous wind
Desert the strand -
A new Columbus sworn to find
The morning land.
Nor too ambitious, friend. To thee
I own my weakness. Not for me
To sing the enfranchised nations' glee,
Or count the cost
Of warships foundered far at sea
And battles lost.
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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 Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: an' the doctors helped, an' we buried him; nobody but just us two,
Jennie an' me, walkin' behint the wagon, his poor body in the box.
Whin I come home I wanted to die, but I said nothin'. I was
afraid Schwartz would take the work away if he knew it was only a
woman who was a-doin' it wid no man round, an so I kep' on; an'
whin the neighbors asked about him bein' in a 'sylum an' out of
his head, an' a cripple an' all that, God forgive me, I was afraid
to tell, and I kept still and let it go at that; an' whin they
asked me how he was I'd say he was better, or more comfortable, or
easier; an' so he was, thank God! bein' in heaven."
She roused herself wearily, and wiped her eyes with the back of
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