| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: race for the discovery. And you see it was important that if I
really meant to make a pile, people should not know it was an
artificial process and capable of turning out diamonds by the ton.
So I had to work all alone. At first I had a little laboratory,
but as my resources began to run out I had to conduct my
experiments in a wretched unfurnished room in Kentish Town, where
I slept at last on a straw mattress on the floor among all my
apparatus. The money simply flowed away. I grudged myself
everything except scientific appliances. I tried to keep things
going by a little teaching, but I am not a very good teacher, and
I have no university degree, nor very much education except in
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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 Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: carving more elaborate, the rooms lighter and more
spacious.
Within the great enclosure thrived a fair sized town,
for, with his ten hundred fighting-men, the Outlaw of
Torn required many squires, lackeys, cooks, scullions,
armorers, smithies, farriers, hostlers and the like to care
for the wants of his little army.
Fifteen hundred war horses, beside five hundred
sumpter beasts, were quartered in the great stables,
while the east court was alive with cows, oxen, goats,
sheep, pigs, rabbits and chickens.
The Outlaw of Torn |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: the philosophers, and made void, to all appearance, nine hundred years
of human toil. The people, having no real hold on their hereditary
Creed, accepted, by tens of thousands, that of the Mussulman invaders.
The Christian remnant became tributaries; and Alexandria dwindled, from
that time forth, into a petty seaport town.
And now--can we pass over this new metaphysical school of Alexandria?
Can we help inquiring in what the strength of Islamism lay? I, at
least, cannot. I cannot help feeling that I am bound to examine in what
relation the creed of Omar and Amrou stands to the Alexandrian
speculations of five hundred years, and how it had power to sweep those
speculations utterly from the Eastern mind. It is a difficult problem;
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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 Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: sailed for Arbroath in the evening, he felt no small degree of
pleasure in despatching this communication to his family.
The weather still continuing favourable for the
operations at the rock, the work proceeded with much energy,
through the exertions both of the seamen and artificers. For
the more speedy and effectual working of the several tackles
in raising the materials as the building advanced in height,
and there being a great extent of railway to attend to, which
required constant repairs, two additional millwrights were
added to the complement on the rock, which, including the
writer, now counted thirty-one in all. So crowded was the
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