| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: Excuse me, sirs, I pray--I can't yet speak--
I'm crying now--and have been all the week.
"'Tis not alone this mourning suit," good masters:
"I've that within"--for which there are no plasters!
Pray, would you know the reason why I'm crying?
The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a-dying!
And if she goes, my tears will never stop;
For as a player, I can't squeeze out one drop:
I am undone, that's all--shall lose my bread--
I'd rather, but that's nothing--lose my head.
When the sweet maid is laid upon the bier,
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: passage did not seem to care, and ere the blood of such a one had
ceased to foam on the floor, such another and four friends with
him had shrieked and died. But a pig is only the unclean
animal--the forbidden of the prophet.
VI
The American Army
I SHOULD very much like to deliver a dissertation on the American
army and the possibilities of its extension. You see, it is such
a beautiful little army, and the dear people don't quite
understand what to do with it. The theory is that it is an
instructional nucleus round which the militia of the country will
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: fair pay for services fairly rendered; and I am not aware that
payment, or even favours, however gracious, bind any man's soul and
conscience in questions of highest morality and highest public
importance. And the importance of that question cannot be
exaggerated. At a moment when Scotland seemed struggling in death-
throes of anarchy, civil and religious, and was in danger of
becoming a prey either to England or to France, if there could not
be formed out of the heart of her a people, steadfast, trusty,
united, strong politically because strong in the fear of God and the
desire of righteousness--at such a moment as this, a crime had been
committed, the like of which had not been heard in Europe since the
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after wisp
growing, trembling, fleeting, and fading in the blue.
The tangled, woody, and almost trackless foot-hills that
enclose the valley, shutting it off from Sonoma on the west,
and from Yolo on the east - rough as they were in outline,
dug out by winter streams, crowned by cliffy bluffs and
nodding pine trees - wore dwarfed into satellites by the bulk
and bearing of Mount Saint Helena. She over-towered them by
two-thirds of her own stature. She excelled them by the
boldness of her profile. Her great bald summit, clear of
trees and pasture, a cairn of quartz and cinnabar, rejected
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