| 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: Rahero stooped and groped. He handled his womankind,
But the fumes of the fire and the kava had quenched the life of their mind,
And they lay like pillars prone; and his hand encountered the boy,
And there sprang in the gloom of his soul a sudden lightning of joy.
"Him can I save!" he thought, "if I were speedy enough."
And he loosened the cloth from his loins, and swaddled the child in the stuff;
And about the strength of his neck he knotted the burden well.
There where the roof had fallen, it roared like the mouth of hell.
Thither Rahero went, stumbling on senseless folk,
And grappled a post of the house, and began to climb in the smoke:
The last alive of Vaiau; and the son borne by the sire.
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: Auvergne accent:
" 'Mouchieur l'Etudiant, I am a poor man, a foundling from the
hospital at Saint-Flour, without either father or mother, and not
rich enough to marry. You are not fertile in relations either,
nor well supplied with the ready? Listen, I have a hand-cart
downstairs which I have hired for two sous an hour; it will hold
all our goods; if you like, we will try to find lodgings
together, since we are both turned out of this. It is not the
earthly paradise, when all is said and done.'
" 'I know that, my good Bourgeat,' said I. 'But I am in a great
fix. I have a trunk downstairs with a hundred francs' worth of
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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 Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: ground, but only for a moment, and then before the black
beast was upon them, they turned and fled, while Tarzan and
his party moved rapidly toward the blackness of the forest
beyond the garden.
"Will they follow us out of the city?" Tarzan asked Otobu.
"Not at night," replied the black. "I have been a slave here
for five years but never have I known these people to leave
the city by night. If they go beyond the forest in the daytime
they usually wait until the dawn of another day before they
return, as they fear to pass through the country of the black
lions after dark. No, I think, Master, that they will not follow
Tarzan the Untamed |
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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: hoop petticoat and faded embroidery, should still haunt the
palace of ruined pride and overthrown power, the symbol of a
departed system, embodying a history in her person. So Esther
Dudley dwelt year after year in the Province House, still
reverencing all that others had flung aside, still faithful to
her King, who, so long as the venerable dame yet held her post,
might be said to retain one true subject in New England, and one
spot of the empire that had been wrested from him.
And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor said, not so.
Whenever her chill and withered heart desired warmth, she was
wont to summon a black slave of Governor Shirley's from the
Twice Told Tales |
