| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: hopes and fears all the dwellers on this earth?
I did not receive my visitors with boisterous rapture as the
bearers of any gifts of profit or fame. There was no vision of a
printed book before me as I sat writing at that table, situated
in a decayed part of Belgravia. After all these years, each
leaving its evidence of slowly blackened pages, I can honestly
say that it is a sentiment akin to piety which prompted me to
render in words assembled with conscientious care the memory of
things far distant and of men who had lived.
But, coming back to Captain Froud and his fixed idea of never
disappointing ship-owners or ship-captains, it was not likely
Some Reminiscences |
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 Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: public-house is open, and the crowd presses in. The mother sits on the
pavement edge with her baby, and the father brings her out a glass of dark,
brownish stuff, and then savagely elbows his way in again. A reek of beer
floats from the public-house, and a loud clatter and rattle of voices.
The wind has dropped, and the sun burns more fiercely than ever. Outside
the two swing-doors there is a thick mass of children like flies at the
mouth of a sweet-jar.
And up, up the hill come the people, with ticklers and golliwogs, and roses
and feathers. Up, up they thrust into the light and heat, shouting,
laughing, squealing, as though they were being pushed by something, far
below, and by the sun, far ahead of them--drawn up into the full, bright,
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