| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: "What do you think of it?" he addressed me in an interrogative
yell.
What I really thought was that we both had had just about enough of
it. The manner in which the great West Wind chooses at times to
administer his possessions does not commend itself to a person of
peaceful and law-abiding disposition, inclined to draw distinctions
between right and wrong in the face of natural forces, whose
standard, naturally, is that of might alone. But, of course, I
said nothing. For a man caught, as it were, between his skipper
and the great West Wind silence is the safest sort of diplomacy.
Moreover, I knew my skipper. He did not want to know what I
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: "Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs. The newest prophet,
even, is of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch.
Yes, sir, Adam himself has to walk behind Shakespeare."
"Was Shakespeare a prophet?"
"Of course he was; and so was Homer, and heaps more. But
Shakespeare and the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from
Tennessee, by the name of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named
Sakka, from Afghanistan. Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk
together, side by side, right behind a crowd from planets not in
our astronomy; next come a dozen or two from Jupiter and other
worlds; next come Daniel, and Sakka and Confucius; next a lot from
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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 Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: the cab; and, getting down, found himself in quite a country
road, the last lamp of the suburb shining some way below, and
the high walls of a garden rising before him in the dark.
The Lodge (as the place was named), stood, indeed, very
solitary. To the south it adjoined another house, but
standing in so large a garden as to be well out of cry; on
all other sides, open fields stretched upward to the woods of
Corstorphine Hill, or backward to the dells of Ravelston, or
downward toward the valley of the Leith. The effect of
seclusion was aided by the great height of the garden walls,
which were, indeed, conventual, and, as John had tested in
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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 Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: cards in the evening, dance with the same partners for twelve years
running, in the same rooms, at the same dates. This delightful life is
varied by solemn walks on the Mall, visits of politeness among the
women, who ask each other where they bought their gowns.
"Conversation is bounded on the south by remarks on the intrigues
lying hidden under the stagnant water of provincial life, on the north
by proposed marriages, on the west by jealousies, and on the east by
sour remarks.
"And so," she went on, striking an attitude, "you see a woman wrinkled
at nine-and-twenty, ten years before the time fixed by the rules of
Doctor Bianchon, a woman whose skin is ruined at an early age, who
The Muse of the Department |
