| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: Why, when you are introduced you must make five
or six elegant bows.
JONATHAN
Six elegant bows! I understand that; six, you say?
Well--
JESSAMY
Then you must press and kiss her hand; then press
and kiss, and so on to her lips and cheeks; then talk
as much as you can about hearts, darts, flames, nectar,
and ambrosia--the more incoherent the better.
JONATHAN
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: imagining none that followed them could pass farther, have taken the
liberty of entertaining us with their own fictions.
It is to be remembered likewise that neither the Greeks nor Romans,
from whom we have received all our information, ever carried their
arms into this part of the world, or ever heard of multitudes of
nations that dwell upon the banks of this vast river; that the
countries where the Nile rises, and those through which it runs,
have no inhabitants but what are savage and uncivilised; that before
they could arrive at its head, they must surmount the insuperable
obstacles of impassable forests, inaccessible cliffs, and deserts
crowded with beasts of prey, fierce by nature, and raging for want
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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 Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: Shaggy Man.
What they saw was more strange than Glinda's actions.
The tiger started to spring on the sleeping boy, but
suddenly lost its power to move and lay flat upon the
ground. The gray wolf seemed unable to lift its feet
from the ground. It pulled first at one leg and then at
another, and finding itself strangely confined to the
spot began to back and snarl angrily. They couldn't
hear the barkings and snarls, but they could see the
creature's mouth open and its thick lips move. Button
Bright, however, being but a few feet away from the
Glinda of Oz |
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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: hyperbolical expression at the best. "He had no hand in the
reforms," he was "a coarse, dirty man"; these were your own words;
and you may think it possible that I am come to support you with
fresh evidence. In a sense, it is even so. Damien has been too
much depicted with a conventional halo and conventional features;
so drawn by men who perhaps had not the eye to remark or the pen to
express the individual; or who perhaps were only blinded and
silenced by generous admiration, such as I partly envy for myself -
such as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy on your
bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method of
portraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate,
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