| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: at last an opportunity. I know I am touching here upon a
nerve acutely sensitive. I know that others of your
colleagues look back on the inertia of your Church, and the
intrusive and decisive heroism of Damien, with something
almost to be called remorse. I am sure it is so with
yourself; I am persuaded your letter was inspired by a
certain envy, not essentially ignoble, and the one human
trait to be espied in that performance. You were thinking of
the lost chance, the past day; of that which should have been
conceived and was not; of the service due and not rendered.
Time was, said the voice in your ear, in your pleasant room,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: good an arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and sings well. The
devil's in it! what more do you want? If that is not a perfect
gentleman, find me a bourgeois who knows all this, or any man who
lives more nobly than he does. Does he do anything, I ask you? Does he
compromise his dignity by hanging about an office, bowing down before
the upstarts you call Directors-General? He walks upright. He is a
man.--However, I have just found in my waistcoat pocket the card he
gave me when he fancied I wanted to cut his throat, poor innocent.
Young men are very simple-minded nowadays! Here it is."
"Rue du Sentier, No. 5," said Monsieur de Fontaine, trying to recall
among all the information he had received, something which might
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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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: being some of the remains of the old lines or fortifications of the city,
where abundance were buried promiscuously from the parishes of Aldersgate,
Clerkenwell, and even out of the city. This ground, as I take it, was
since made a physic garden, and after that has been built upon.
(2) A piece of ground just over the Black Ditch, as it was then
called, at the end of Holloway Lane, in Shoreditch parish. It has been
since made a yard for keeping hogs, and for other ordinary uses, but is
quite out of use as a burying-ground.
(3) The upper end of Hand Alley, in Bishopsgate Street, which was
then a green field, and was taken in particularly for Bishopsgate
parish, though many of the carts out of the city brought their dead
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: to her brother's head every night, trying to untie it.
They all said they would do so with pleasure. The eldest
made the first attempt, and with a rushing noise she fled
through the air.
Toward daylight she returned. She had been unsuccessful, as she succeeded
in untying only one of the knots. All took their turns regularly,
and each one succeeded in untying only one knot each time.
But when the youngest went, she commenced the work as soon
as she reached the lodge; although it had always been occupied,
still the Indians never could see any one. For ten nights now,
the smoke had not ascended, but filled the lodge and drove them out.
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