| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: treasure lay, that the King might take it by force, and -
they would trust in his gratitude. Why not? This Elias
refused to do, for he looked on the gold as his own. They
quarrelled, and they wept at the evening meal, and late in
the night came one Langton - a priest, almost learned - to
borrow more money for the Barons. Elias and Adah went
to their chamber.'
Kadmiel laughed scornfully in his beard. The shots
across the valley stopped as the shooting party changed
their ground for the last beat.
'So it was I, not Elias,' he went on quietly, 'that made
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: sack was the great attraction; it had already beguiled the heart of
poor Apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to show it to the
Father Prior, But whether it was my address, or the sack, or the
idea speedily published among that part of the brotherhood who
attend on strangers that I was not a pedlar after all, I found no
difficulty as to my reception. Modestine was led away by a layman
to the stables, and I and my pack were received into Our Lady of
the Snows.
THE MONKS
FATHER MICHAEL, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of
thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur
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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 Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: guards, the Captain and I following--abreast, and eyeing one
another suspiciously; the Lieutenant, with the sergeant and five
troopers, bringing up the rear. Clon moved slowly, moaning from
time to time; and but for the aid given him by the two men with
him, must have sunk down again and again.
He led the way out between two houses close to the inn, and
struck a narrow track, scarcely discernible, which ran behind
other houses, and then plunged into the thickest part of the
wood. A single person, traversing the covert, might have made
such a track; or pigs, or children. But it was the first idea
that occurred to us, and put us all on the alert. The Captain
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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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: is a sofa my neighbour has bought as a Christmas surprise for her husband,
and which she showed me the last time I called there--a beautiful invention,
as she explained, combining a bedstead, a sofa, and a chest of drawers,
and into which you put your clothes, and on top of which you put yourself,
and if anybody calls in the middle of the night and you happen to be
using the drawing-room as a bedroom, you just pop the bedclothes inside,
and there you are discovered sitting on your sofa and looking for all
the world as though you had been expecting visitors for hours.
"Pray, does he wear pyjamas?" I inquired.
But she had never heard of pyjamas.
It takes a long time to make my spring lists.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
