| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: I had to expect particular misfortunes to myself.
But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy
rather than my reason; and, accordingly, the ship being fitted out,
and the cargo furnished, and all things done, as by agreement, by
my partners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st
September 1659, being the same day eight years that I went from my
father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their
authority, and the fool to my own interests.
Our ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried six
guns and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We
had on board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: Then he too took my wrist between his fingers. His touch
was very firm and cool. After that he pulled down my
eyelids and said, "H'm." Then he patted my cheek smartly
once or twice. "You'll do," he pronounced. He picked up
a sheet of paper from the table and looked it over,
keen-eyed. There followed a clinking of bottles and
glasses, a few low-spoken words to the nurse, and then,
as she left the room the big red-haired man seated
himself heavily in the chair near the bedside and rested
his great hands on his fat knees. He stared down at me
in much the same way that a huge mastiff looks at a
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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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: him for another cognomen, for though he was a mild-mannered
little man, he had an uncomfortable way of shutting up
oyster-wise and looking disagreeable when approached concerning
his personal history.
He was small: most Creole men are small when they are old. It is
strange, but a fact. It must be that age withers them sooner and
more effectually than those of un-Latinised extraction. Mr.
Baptiste was, furthermore, very much wrinkled and lame. Like the
Son of Man, he had nowhere to lay his head, save when some kindly
family made room for him in a garret or a barn. He subsisted by
doing odd jobs, white-washing, cleaning yards, doing errands, and
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: flowing through it; but that current, like the ripples of our
liquid, soon subsides, being, like them, converted into heat.
Do these words shadow forth anything like the reality? Such
speculations cannot be injurious if they are enunciated without
dogmatism. I do confess that ideas such as these here indicated
exercise a strong fascination on my mind. Is then the magnetic
field really viscous, and if so, what substance exists in it and the
wire to produce the viscosity? Let us first look at the proved
effects, and afterwards turn our thoughts back upon their cause.
When the wire approaches the magnet, an action is evoked within it,
which travels through it with a velocity comparable to that of light.
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