| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: air; it is one of the simple pleasures that we lose by living
cribbed and covered in a house, that, though the coming of
the day is still the most inspiriting, yet day's departure,
also, and the return of night refresh, renew, and quiet us;
and in the pastures of the dusk we stand, like cattle,
exulting in the absence of the load.
Our nights wore never cold, and they were always still, but
for one remarkable exception. Regularly, about nine o'clock,
a warm wind sprang up, and blew for ten minutes, or maybe a
quarter of an hour, right down the canyon, fanning it well
out, airing it as a mother airs the night nursery before the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: they have let go all the net, except the line at the end, and then
the boat rows on shore, when the men, hauling the net to the shore
at both ends, bring to shore with it such fish as they surrounded
in the little way they rowed. This, at that time, proved to be an
incredible number, insomuch that the men could hardly draw them on
shore. As soon as the boats had brought their fish on shore we
observed a guard or watch placed on the shore in several places,
who, we found, had their eye, not on the fishermen, but on the
country people who came down to the shore to buy their fish; and
very sharp we found they were, and some that came with small carts
were obliged to go back empty without any fish. When we came to
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: and found everything to be as the dwarf had told him. The door flew
open at the third stroke of the wand, and when the lions were quieted
he went on through the castle and came at length to a beautiful hall.
Around it he saw several knights sitting in a trance; then he pulled
off their rings and put them on his own fingers. In another room he
saw on a table a sword and a loaf of bread, which he also took.
Further on he came to a room where a beautiful young lady sat upon a
couch; and she welcomed him joyfully, and said, if he would set her
free from the spell that bound her, the kingdom should be his, if he
would come back in a year and marry her. Then she told him that the
well that held the Water of Life was in the palace gardens; and bade
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than
even she could bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant,
though long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast.
316 THE SCARLET LETTER
And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken
The Scarlet Letter |
