| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: unfortunates is the question. The particular character of the methods
employed, the peculiar uniforms worn by the lifeboat crew, the noises
made by the rocket apparatus, and the mingled shoutings of the rescued
and the rescuers, may all be contrary to your taste and traditions.
But all these objections and antipathies, I submit, are as nothing
compared with the delivering of the people out of that dark sea.
If among my readers there be any who have the least conception that
this scheme is put forward by me from any interested motives by all
means let them refuse to contribute even by a single penny to what
would be, at least, one of the most shameless of shams. There may be
those who are able to imagine that men who have been literally martyred
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: for yourself; I am happy in loving you; I shall love you more and more
to my dying day. I have pride in my love; I feel it is my destiny to
have one sole emotion in my life. What I shall tell you now is
dreadful, I know--but I am glad to have no child; I do not wish for
any. I feel I am more wife than mother. Well, then, can you fear?
Listen to me, my own beloved, promise to forget, not this hour of
mingled tenderness and doubt, but the words of that madman. Jules, you
/must/. Promise me not to see him, not to go to him. I have a deep
conviction that if you set one foot in that maze we shall both roll
down a precipice where I shall perish--but with your name upon my
lips, your heart in my heart. Why hold me so high in that heart and
Ferragus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: anything but stars higgledy-piggledy. Next to the translation of
Ecclesiastes, his _magnum opus_ was his work on Shakespear's Sonnets,
in which he accepted a previous identification of Mr W. H., the "onlie
begetter" of the sonnets, with the Earl of Pembroke (William Herbert),
and promulgated his own identification of Mistress Mary Fitton with
the Dark Lady. Whether he was right or wrong about the Dark Lady did
not matter urgently to me: she might have been Maria Tompkins for all
I cared. But Tyler would have it that she was Mary Fitton; and he
tracked Mary down from the first of her marriages in her teens to her
tomb in Cheshire, whither he made a pilgrimage and whence returned in
triumph with a picture of her statue, and the news that he was
|
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 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if
that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face? If it was my
master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me? I have
served him long enough. And then..." The man paused and passed
his hand over his face.
"These are all very strange circumstances," said Mr.
Utterson, "but I think I begin to see daylight. Your master,
Poole, is plainly seized with one of those maladies that both
torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for aught I know, the
alteration of his voice; hence the mask and the avoidance of his
friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means of which
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
