| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: digestion and a placid, reasonable view of life even when hungry.
"Yes," I said. "Shut up with the old man. Some very particular
business."
"He will spin him a damned endless yarn," observed the chief
engineer.
He smiled rather sourly. He was dyspeptic, and suffered from
gnawing hunger in the morning. The second smiled broadly, a
smile that made two vertical folds on his shaven cheeks. And I
smiled, too, but I was not exactly amused. In that man, whose
name apparently could not be uttered anywhere in the Malay
Archipelago without a smile, there was nothing amusing whatever.
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: it was only a flesh-wound. After the first instant of shock I was not
scared. But blood flowed fast. Warm, oily, slippery, it ran down inside my
shirt sleeve and dripped off my fingers.
"Bud," hoarsely spoke up Bill, breaking the stillness, "mebbe you killed
him!"
Buell coughed, as if choking.
"What's thet?" For once his deep voice was pitched low. "Listen."
Drip! drip! drip! It was like the sound of water dripping from a leak in a
roof. It was directly under me, and, quick as thought, I knew the sound was
made by my own dripping blood.
"Find thet, somebody," ordered Buell.
The Young Forester |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: has since been built at the junction of the Canal Saint-Martin and the
Seine. Here he sat down on a stone, and I, sitting opposite to him,
saw the old man's hair gleaming like threads of silver in the
moonlight. The stillness was scarcely troubled by the sound of the
far-off thunder of traffic along the boulevards; the clear night air
and everything about us combined to make a strangely unreal scene.
"You talk of millions to a young man," I began, "and do you think that
he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are
you not laughing at me?"
"May I die unshriven," he cried vehemently, "if all that I am about to
tell you is not true. I was one-and-twenty years old, like you at this
|
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 King Lear by William Shakespeare: That she would soon be here.
Enter [Oswald the] Steward.
Is your lady come?
Lear. This is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride
Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows.
Out, varlet, from my sight!
Corn. What means your Grace?
Enter Goneril.
Lear. Who stock'd my servant? Regan, I have good hope
Thou didst not know on't.- Who comes here? O heavens!
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
King Lear |
