| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Now death shall stop his dismal threatening sound,
And his ill-boding tongue no more shall speak.
[Soldiers bring the body forward.]
WARWICK.
I think his understanding is bereft.--
Speak, Clifford, dost thou know who speaks to thee?--
Dark cloudy death o'ershades his beams of life,
And he nor sees nor hears us, what we say.
RICHARD.
O, would he did! and so, perhaps, he doth;
'T is but his policy to counterfeit,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: tell you what I think."
"When you have seen Mameena, Macumazahn, you will say that the choice
was very wise. Well, Zikali, Opener of Doors, laughed loudly when he
heard it. 'The ox seeks the fat pasture, but the young bull the rough
mountainside where the heifers graze,' he said; 'and after all, a bull
is better than an ox. Now begin to travel your own road, Son of
Matiwane, and from time to time return to the Black Kloof and tell me
how it fares with you. I will promise you not to die before I know the
end of it.'
"Now, Macumazahn, I have told you things that hitherto have lived in my
own heart only. And, Macumazahn, Bangu is in ill favour with Panda,
Child of Storm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: he of the Chaussee d'Antin takes his ease, reads the money-articles in
the newspapers, and has a business of his own in the faubourg
Montmartre. The portress in the quarter of prostitution was formerly a
prostitute; in the Marais, she has morals, is cross-grained, and full
of crotchets.
On seeing Monsieur Jules this particular portress, holding her
knitting in one hand, took a knife and stirred the half-extinguished
peat in her foot-warmer; then she said:--
"You want Madame Etienne; do you mean Madame Etienne Gruget?"
"Yes," said Jules, assuming a vexed air.
"Who makes trimmings?"
Ferragus |
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 Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: the crete-de-coq, whose radicles sought sustenance, perhaps from
human dust, in the decay of generations:--all that rich life of
graves summoned up fancies of Resurrection, Nature's
resurrection-work--wondrous transformations of flesh, marvellous
bans migration of souls! ... From some forgotten crevice of that
tomb roof, which alone intervened between her and the vast light,
a sturdy weed was growing. He knew that plant, as it quivered
against the blue,--the chou-gras, as Creole children call it:
its dark berries form the mockingbird's favorite food ... Might
not its roots, exploring darkness, have found some unfamiliar
nutriment within?--might it not be that something of the dead
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