| 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: rooms shall remain closed to your tears and entreaties. The most
fanatical advocate of temperance could not be more pitilessly
fierce in his rectitude than the Marine Department of the Board
of Trade. As I have been face to face at various times with all
the examiners of the Port of London in my generation, there can
be no doubt as to the force and the continuity of my
abstemiousness. Three of them were examiners in seamanship, and
it was my fate to be delivered into the hands of each of them at
proper intervals of sea service. The first of all, tall, spare,
with a perfectly white head and mustache, a quiet, kindly manner,
and an air of benign intelligence, must, I am forced to conclude,
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: about her. Then the Only-Just-Lady said, ``Sister Helen Vincula, it
will do you good, too, as well as this little girl to stay in the
high mountains.
Not until all of Bessie Bell's little blue checked aprons, and all
of her little blue dresses, and all of her little white petticoats,
and all of her little white night-gowns, and even the tiny old
night-gown with the linen thread name worked on it, had been put
with all the rest of her small belongings into the old trunk with
brass tacks in the leather, the old, old trunk that had belonged to
Sister Helen Vincula, did Bessie Bell know that it was herself,
little Bessie Bell, who was going away Somewhere.
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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 Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: middle-class tradition: the day school and the business training
instead of the university. I believe in the day school part of it.
At all events, you know your own children.
TARLETON. Do you? I'm not so sure of it. Fact is, my dear
Summerhays, once childhood is over, once the little animal has got
past the stage at which it acquires what you might call a sense of
decency, it's all up with the relation between parent and child. You
cant get over the fearful shyness of it.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Shyness?
TARLETON. Yes, shyness. Read Dickens.
LORD SUMMERHAYS _[surprised]_ Dickens!! Of all authors, Charles
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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 Bucolics by Virgil: And bear my doom, and character my love
Upon the tender tree-trunks: they will grow,
And you, my love, grow with them. And meanwhile
I with the Nymphs will haunt Mount Maenalus,
Or hunt the keen wild boar. No frost so cold
But I will hem with hounds thy forest-glades,
Parthenius. Even now, methinks, I range
O'er rocks, through echoing groves, and joy to launch
Cydonian arrows from a Parthian bow.-
As if my madness could find healing thus,
Or that god soften at a mortal's grief!
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