| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite
indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so unobservant
of it, that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a few hours
after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience to me
in travelling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy
for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate,
because better instructed, tastes and appetites.
My mother had likewise an excellent constitution: she suckled
all her ten children. I never knew either my father or mother
to have any sickness but that of which they dy'd, he at 89,
and she at 85 years of age. They lie buried together at Boston,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: looked down at the wharf in aggrieved thought. He shuffled his
feet a little; he wore straw slippers with thick soles. The
morning fog had thickened considerably. Everything round us
dripped: the derricks, the rails, every single rope in the ship-
-as if a fit of crying had come upon the universe.
Almayer again raised his head and in the accents of a man
accustomed to the buffets of evil fortune asked hardly audibly:
"I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a pony on board?"
I told him almost in a whisper, for he attuned my communications
to his minor key, that we had such a thing as a pony, and I
hinted, as gently as I could, that he was confoundedly in the way
Some Reminiscences |
