| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Still was the dark lagoon; beyond on the coral wall,
He saw the breakers shine, he heard them bellow and fall.
Alone, on the top of the reef, a man with a flaming brand
Walked, gazing and pausing, a fish-spear poised in his hand.
The foam boiled to his calf when the mightier breakers came,
And the torch shed in the wind scattering tufts of flame.
Afar on the dark lagoon a canoe lay idly at wait:
A figure dimly guiding it: surely the fisherman's mate.
Rahero saw and he smiled. He straightened his mighty thews:
Naked, with never a weapon, and covered with scorch and bruise,
He straightened his arms, he filled the void of his body with breath,
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: to put it. What good would our twenty-five dollars have been, and where
should we have been, if the other fellows hadn't raised the seventy-five
dollars first? "
Chapter XIX: Lion and Cub
My task is done. I have discussed with as much brevity as I could the
three foundations of our ancient grudge against England: our school
textbooks, our various controversies from the Revolution to the Alaskan
boundary dispute, and certain differences in customs and manners. Some of
our historians to whom I refer are themselves affected by the ancient
grudge. You will see this if you read them; you will find the facts,
which they give faithfully, and you will also find that they often (and I
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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 The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: made by the tramping of the crowd and the soldiers, the murmur of the
various colloquies, the sight of the sky, the coolness of the air, the
aspect of Andernach and the shimmering of the waters of the Rhine,--
these impressions came to the soul of the young man vaguely,
confusedly, torpidly, like all the sensations he had felt since his
waking. There were moments, he said, when he thought he was no longer
living.
I was then in prison. Enthusiastic, as we all are at twenty years of
age, I wished to defend my country, and I commanded a company of free
lances, which I had organized in the vicinity of Andernach. A few days
before these events I had fallen plump, during the night, into a
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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 Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: sage Felicia and the magic water, and of almost all the longer
pieces of verse: let it keep, and welcome, its prose and the honour of
being the first of books of the kind."
"This that comes next," said the barber, "is the 'Diana,' entitled
the 'Second Part, by the Salamancan,' and this other has the same
title, and its author is Gil Polo."
"As for that of the Salamancan," replied the curate, "let it go to
swell the number of the condemned in the yard, and let Gil Polo's be
preserved as if it came from Apollo himself: but get on, gossip, and
make haste, for it is growing late."
"This book," said the barber, opening another, "is the ten books
Don Quixote |
