| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: ends, and hung at full length - not doubled, for your life - across
the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly
not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will
assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every
roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency
to overbalance with a well-adjusted stone.
On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six, we
began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in
the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a
moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so
contumelious a passage that the street outside was crowded from
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: would never return to her people to mate with Buckingham.
I owed my life to her, and, all other considerations aside,
that was sufficient demand upon my gratitude and my honor to
necessitate my suffering every inconvenience in her service.
Too, she was queen of England. But, by far the most potent
argument in her favor, she was a woman in distress--and a
young and very beautiful one.
And so, though I wished a thousand times that she was back
in her camp, I never let her guess it, but did all that lay
within my power to serve and protect her. I thank God now
that I did so.
Lost Continent |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: the low ground-floor. The house walls are washed with yellow color;
and door, and first-floor shutters, all the Venetian shutters of the
attic windows, all are painted green.
Entering the house, you find yourself in a little lobby with a crooked
staircase straight in front of you. It is a crazy wooden structure,
the spiral balusters are brown with age, and the steps themselves take
a new angle at every turn. The great old-fashioned paneled dining-
room, floored with square white tiles from Chateau-Regnault, is on
your right; to the left is the sitting-room, equally large, but here
the walls are not paneled; they have been covered instead with a
saffron-colored paper, bordered with green. The walnut-wood rafters
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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 The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: a conscious exchange of glances. Up to the very last moment those
on board stuck to their pumps, which spouted two clear streams of
water upon their bare feet. Their brown skin showed through the
rents of their shirts; and the two small bunches of half-naked,
tattered men went on bowing from the waist to each other in their
back-breaking labour, up and down, absorbed, with no time for a
glance over the shoulder at the help that was coming to them. As
we dashed, unregarded, alongside a voice let out one, only one
hoarse howl of command, and then, just as they stood, without caps,
with the salt drying gray in the wrinkles and folds of their hairy,
haggard faces, blinking stupidly at us their red eyelids, they made
The Mirror of the Sea |
