| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: invented sounds for it, his fellows did not understand
the sounds. Then it was that he fell back on
pantomime, illustrating the thought wherever possible
and at the same time repeating the new sound over and
over again.
Thus language grew. By the few sounds we possessed we
were enabled to think a short distance beyond those
sounds; then came the need for new sounds wherewith to
express the new thought. Sometimes, however, we thought
too long a distance in advance of our sounds, managed
to achieve abstractions (dim ones I grant), which we
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: feed the sparrows; you hear people singing or washing
dishes, or the sound of tears and castigation; the linen
on a clothes-pole flaps against funereal sculpture; or
perhaps the cat slips over the lintel and descends on a
memorial urn. And as there is nothing else astir, these
incongruous sights and noises take hold on the attention
and exaggerate the sadness of the place.
Greyfriars is continually overrun by cats. I have
seen one afternoon, as many as thirteen of them seated on
the grass beside old Milne, the Master Builder, all sleek
and fat, and complacently blinking, as if they had fed
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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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: should. I knew the worst of him now, and forty minutes is not an
unreasonable time. Yes, I distinctly hoped. . .
But not a bit of it. When I presented myself to be examined for
Master the examiner who received me was short, plump, with a
round, soft face in grey, fluffy whiskers, and fresh, loquacious
lips.
He commenced operations with an easy-going "Let's see. H'm.
Suppose you tell me all you know of charter-parties." He kept it
up in that style all through, wandering off in the shape of
comment into bits out of his own life, then pulling himself up
short and returning to the business in hand. It was very
Some Reminiscences |
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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: point of law behind the scenes, and who was plunged more than waist
high in a phrase of judicial slang, of which this is the conclusion:--
"--And as for me, although I am hardly a legist, and at the most,
an amateur attorney, I maintain this: that, in accordance with
the terms of the customs of Normandy, at Saint-Michel, and for
each year, an equivalent must be paid to the profit of the lord
of the manor, saving the rights of others, and by all and several,
the proprietors as well as those seized with inheritance, and that,
for all emphyteuses, leases, freeholds, contracts of domain, mortgages--"
"Echo, plaintive nymph," hummed Grantaire.
Near Grantaire, an almost silent table, a sheet of paper, an inkstand
Les Miserables |
