| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: have resisted these appeals, and continue to sink my friend's
money in a manner that I knew him to dislike. At least, when I
did awake to any sense of my position, I awoke to it entirely;
and determined not only to follow his counsel for the future, but
even as regards the past, to rectify his losses. For in this
juncture of affairs I called to mind that I was not without a
possible resource, and resolved, at whatever cost of
mortification, to beard the Loudon family in their historic city.
In the excellent Scots' phrase, I made a moonlight flitting, a
thing never dignified, but in my case unusually easy. As I had
scarce a pair of boots worth portage, I deserted the whole of my
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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 Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn
like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore,
and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for
we are the sons of the sea.
No longer delay, let us hasten away in the
track of the sea-gull's call,
The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother,
the waves are our comrades all.
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: more to say to me; and the result was consolatory. I would go to
sleep dwelling with restfulness upon these images; they passed before
me, besides, to an appropriate music; for I had already singled out
from that rude psalm the one lovely verse which dwells in the minds
of all, not growing old, not disgraced by its association with long
Sunday tasks, a scarce conscious joy in childhood, in age a companion
thought:-
'In pastures green Thou leadest me,
The quiet waters by.'
The remainder of my childish recollections are all of the matter of
what was read to me, and not of any manner in the words. If these
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: republic about it anywhere. There are ranks, here. There are
viceroys, princes, governors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors, and
a hundred orders of nobility, grading along down from grand-ducal
archangels, stage by stage, till the general level is struck, where
there ain't any titles. Do you know what a prince of the blood is,
on earth?"
"No."
"Well, a prince of the blood don't belong to the royal family
exactly, and he don't belong to the mere nobility of the kingdom;
he is lower than the one, and higher than t'other. That's about
the position of the patriarchs and prophets here. There's some
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