| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: (says he) nature shall begin the most difficult part of her work,
by changing the ideas and inclinations of the two sexes: Men
shall turn effeminate, and women manly; wives shall domineer, and
husbands obey; ladies shall ride a horseback, dress'd like
cavaliers; princes and nobles appear in night-rails and
petticoats; men shall squeak upon theatres with female voices,
and women corrupt virgins; lords shall knot and cut paper; and
even the northern people.........:" A Greek phrase (which for
modesty's sake I forbear to translate) which denotes a vice too
frequent amongst us.
That the Ministry foresaw this great change, is plain from the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: to get a lasso over the neck of that very forcible and
barbaric person, your father. I am doing my best to help lay
the foundation of a scientific world control of fuel
production and distribution. We have a Fuel Commission in
London with rather wide powers of enquiry into the whole
world problem of fuel. We shall come out to Washington
presently with proposals. "
Miss Grammont surveyed the landscape. "I suppose," she said,
"poor father IS rather like an unbroken mule in business
affairs. So many of our big business men in America are.
He'll lash out at you."
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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 House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: of a civilized life were as unattainable as in a desert. Through
this atmosphere of torrid splendour moved wan beings as richly
upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or
permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity
from restaurant to concert-hall, from palm-garden to music-room,
from "art exhibit" to dress-maker's opening. High-stepping horses
or elaborately equipped motors waited to carry these ladies into
vague metropolitan distances, whence they returned, still more
wan from the weight of their sables, to be sucked back into the
stifling inertia of the hotel routine. Somewhere behind them, in
the background of their lives, there was doubtless a real past,
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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 The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: land was once joined, and thus allowed animals so delicate
and helpless as the tucutuco and Reithrodon to pass over.
The correspondence of the cliffs is far from proving any
junction; because such cliffs generally are formed by the
intersection of sloping deposits, which, before the elevation
of the land, had been accumulated near the then existing
shores. It is, however, a remarkable coincidence, that in the
two large islands cut off by the Beagle Channel from the
rest of Tierra del Fuego, one has cliffs composed of matter
that may be called stratified alluvium, which front similar
ones on the opposite side of the channel, -- while the other is
The Voyage of the Beagle |
