| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: whom the world deemed dead and buried came back, like ghosts,--to
read their own epitaphs.
... Almost at the same hour that Laroussel was questioning the
child in Creole patois, another expedition, searching for bodies
along the coast, discovered on the beach of a low islet famed as
a haunt of pelicans, the corpse of a child. Some locks of bright
hair still adhering to the skull, a string of red beads, a white
muslin dress, a handkerchief broidered with the initials
"A.L.B.,"--were secured as clews; and the little body was
interred where it had been found.
And, several days before, Captain Hotard, of the relief-boat
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: prevented, wherever obstruction is possible, by every influence visible
and invisible that pro-German and pro-Irish propaganda can exert.
Thousands of our American school children all over our country are still
being given a version of our Revolution and the political state of
England then, which is as faulty as was George III's government, with its
fake parliament, its "rotten boroughs," its Little Sarum. Meanwhile that
"army of spies" through which the Kaiser boasted that he ruled "supreme"
here, and which, though he is gone, is by no means a demobilized army,
but a very busy and well-drilled and well-conducted army, is very glad
that our boys and girls should be taught false history, and will do its
best to see that they are not taught true history.
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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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: for the house of such a man as Mr. Rankeillor, I suppose they
would have burst out laughing in my face. So I went up and down,
and through the street, and down to the harbour-side, like a dog
that has lost its master, with a strange gnawing in my inwards,
and every now and then a movement of despair. It grew to be high
day at last, perhaps nine in the forenoon; and I was worn with
these wanderings, and chanced to have stopped in front of a very
good house on the landward side, a house with beautiful, clear
glass windows, flowering knots upon the sills, the walls
new-harled[33] and a chase-dog sitting yawning on the step like
one that was at home. Well, I was even envying this dumb brute,
Kidnapped |
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 Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was
carried before him on the pommel of his saddle! His terror rose
to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon
Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the
slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then,
they dashed through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks
flashing at every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in
the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse's
head, in the eagerness of his flight.
They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy
Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
