| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: when all this was full of life and merchandise, and he overlooked
a busy scene on the river bank, his little daughter by his side.
Now the up-country canoes glided past the little rotten wharf of
Lingard and Co., to paddle up the Pantai branch, and cluster
round the new jetty belonging to Abdulla. Not that they loved
Abdulla, but they dared not trade with the man whose star had
set. Had they done so they knew there was no mercy to be
expected from Arab or Rajah; no rice to be got on credit in the
times of scarcity from either; and Almayer could not help them,
having at times hardly enough for himself. Almayer, in his
isolation and despair, often envied his near neighbour the
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: "I am not so sure of that, sir," answered the Tin Woodman. "A while
ago the crooked Sorcerer who invented the Magic Powder fell down a
precipice and was killed. All his possessions went to a relative--an
old woman named Dyna, who lives in the Emerald City. She went to the
mountains where the Sorcerer had lived and brought away everything she
thought of value. Among them was a small bottle of the Powder of
Life; but of course Dyna didn't know it was a Magic Powder, at all. It
happened she had once had a big blue bear for a pet; but the bear
choked to death on a fishbone one day, and she loved it so dearly
that Dyna made a rug of its skin, leaving the head and four paws on
the hide. She kept the rug on the floor of her front parlor."
The Road to Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: water somewhere off the Island of Juan Fernandez, he felt faint
and lazy all over, just as human people do when the spring is in
their legs, and he remembered the good firm beaches of
Novastoshnah seven thousand miles away, the games his companions
played, the smell of the seaweed, the seal roar, and the fighting.
That very minute he turned north, swimming steadily, and as he
went on he met scores of his mates, all bound for the same place,
and they said: "Greeting, Kotick! This year we are all
holluschickie, and we can dance the Fire-dance in the breakers off
Lukannon and play on the new grass. But where did you get that
coat?"
The Jungle Book |
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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: to an assistant, and betake himself to chant a requiem from a stall in
the church of which on Sundays he is the fairest ornament, where his
is the most imposing voice, where he distorts his huge mouth with
energy to thunder out a joyous /Amen/. So is he chorister. At four
o'clock, freed from his official servitude, he reappears to shed joy
and gaiety upon the most famous shop in the city. Happy is his wife,
he has no time to be jealous: he is a man of action rather than of
sentiment. His mere arrival spurs the young ladies at the counter;
their bright eyes storm the customers; he expands in the midst of all
the finery, the lace and muslin kerchiefs, that their cunning hands
have wrought. Or, again, more often still, before his dinner he waits
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
