| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: Then came the singing of one or more hymns in the native tongue,
and the recitation in concert of the Lord's Prayer, also in Samoan.
Many of these hymns were set to ancient tunes, very wild and
warlike, and strangely at variance with the missionary words.
Sometimes a passing band of hostile warriors, with blackened faces,
would peer in at us through the open windows, and often we were
forced to pause until the strangely savage, monotonous noise of the
native drums had ceased; but no Samoan, nor, I trust, white person,
changed his reverent attitude. Once, I remember a look of
surprised dismay crossing the countenance of Tusitala when my son,
contrary to his usual custom of reading the next chapter following
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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 Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: genius in Europe, to which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no
more justice than Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures
that shall endure as long as the principle of evil existing in
the heart of man shall produce a few copies from century to
century. Sometimes the type becomes half-human when incarnate as
a Mirabeau, sometimes it is an inarticulate force in a Bonaparte,
sometimes it overwhelms the universe with irony as a Rabelais;
or, yet again, it appears when a Marechal de Richelieu elects to
laugh at human beings instead of scoffing at things, or when one
of the most famous of our ambassadors goes a step further and
scoffs at both men and things. But the profound genius of Juan
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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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: despair. The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious minds in
Flanders likewise believe; and is not a whit wiser nor more credulous
than his audience. But as it would be impossible to make a harmony of
all the different renderings, here are the outlines of the story;
stripped, it may be, of its picturesque quaintness, but with all its
bold disregard of historical truth, and its moral teachings approved
by religion--a myth, the blossom of imaginative fancy; an allegory
that the wise may interpret to suit themselves. To each his own
pasturage, and the task of separating the tares from the wheat.
The boat that served to carry passengers from the Island of Cadzand to
Ostend was upon the point of departure; but before the skipper loosed
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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 Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: hoping for profits that would help him with his chattel mortgage.
After he had been at work for a month, however, he found that he
ran behind. He began to see that, in spite of its boastings, the
Union had really done nothing for him, except indirectly with its
threatened strike. The Union, on the other hand, insisted that it
had been McGaw's business to arrange his own terms with Schwartz.
What it had done was to kill Grogan as a competitor, and knock her
non-union men out of the job. This ended its duty.
While they said this much to McGaw; so far as outsiders could
know, the Union claimed that they had scored a brilliant victory.
The Brooklyn and New York branches duly paraded it as another
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