| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: open her box, took out her best clothes, snatched up an axe,
and chopped all her undergarments and dresses to bits. All the
wages Nikita earned went to his wife, and he raised no
objection to that. So now, two days before the holiday, Martha
had been twice to see Vasili Andreevich and had got from him
wheat flour, tea, sugar, and a quart of vodka, the lot costing
three rubles, and also five rubles in cash, for which she
thanked him as for a special favour, though he owed Nikita at
least twenty rubles.
'What agreement did we ever draw up with you?' said Vasili
Andreevich to Nikita. 'If you need anything, take it; you will
Master and Man |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: converse with heroes; and who, if by chance they meet with an
heroic act, bathe their spirits in that, as in May-dew, and feel
themselves thereby, if but for an hour, more fair.
If any such shall chance to see these words, let me ask them to
consider with me that one word Hero, and what it means.
Hero; Heroic; Heroism. These words point to a phase of human
nature, the capacity for which we all have in ourselves, which is
as startling and as interesting in its manifestations as any, and
which is always beautiful, always ennobling, and therefore always
attractive to those whose hearts are not yet seared by the world
or brutalised by self-indulgence.
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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 Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: perhaps by a wider circle of friends and acquaintance.] in
giving the real history of the Highland regiments, has rendered
any attempt to fill up the sketch with fancy-colouring extremely
rash and precarious. Yet I, too, have still a lingering fancy to
add a stone to the cairn; and without calling in imagination to
aid the impressions of juvenile recollection, I may just attempt
to embody one or two scenes illustrative of the Highland
character, and which belong peculiarly to the Chronicles of the
Canongate, to the grey-headed eld of whom they are as familiar as
to Chrystal Croftangry. Yet I will not go back to the days of
clanship and claymores. Have at you, gentle reader, with a tale
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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 Jungle by Upton Sinclair: again now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis,
dumb and despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet
other agonies were on the way, and shudder at the thought of them.
For Ona was visibly going to pieces. In the first place she was
developing a cough, like the one that had killed old Dede Antanas.
She had had a trace of it ever since that fatal morning when the greedy
streetcar corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was
beginning to grow serious, and to wake her up at night. Even worse
than that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered;
she would have frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping;
and sometimes she would come home at night shuddering and moaning,
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