| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: their duties.
'That no searcher during this time of visitation be permitted to use
any public work or employment, or keep any shop or stall, or be
employed as a laundress, or in any other common employment
whatsoever.
Chirurgeons.
'For better assistance of the searchers, forasmuch as there hath been
heretofore great abuse in misreporting the disease, to the further
spreading of the infection, it is therefore ordered that there be chosen
and appointed able and discreet chirurgeons, besides those that do
already belong to the pest-house, amongst whom the city and Liberties
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: How proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself?
We know the time since he was mild and affable,
And if we did but glance a far-off look,
Immediately he was upon his knee,
That all the court admir'd him for submission;
But meet him now, and be it in the morn
When every one will give the time of day,
He knits his brow, and shows an angry eye,
And passeth by with stiff unbowed knee,
Disdaining duty that to us belongs.
Small curs are not regarded when they grin,
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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 The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: At the same time he called shrilly to Sheeta, as he drew the
struggling lion upward until only his hind feet touched the ground.
Quickly he made the rope fast to a stout branch, and as
the panther, in answer to his summons, leaped into sight,
Tarzan dropped to the earth beside the struggling and
infuriated Numa, and with a long sharp knife sprang upon him
at one side even as Sheeta did upon the other.
The panther tore and rent Numa upon the right, while the
ape-man struck home with his stone knife upon the other,
so that before the mighty clawing of the king of beasts had
succeeded in parting the rope he hung quite dead and harmless
The Beasts of Tarzan |
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 Marie by H. Rider Haggard: many? Soft words are our only chance."
Still he attempted to fire, and would have done so had I not thrown
myself upon him and literally torn the gun from his hand. By this time
the Vrouw Prinsloo had come up, a very weird spectacle, I recollect, in
what she called her "sleep-garments," that included a night-cap made of
a worn jackal skin and a kind of otter-pelt stomacher.
"Accursed fool!" she said to Marais, "would you cause all our throats to
be cut? Go forward, you, Allan, and talk to those 'swartzels'" (that
is, black creatures), "gently, as you would to a savage dog. You have a
tongue steeped in oil, and they may listen to you."
"Yes," I answered; "that seems the best thing to do. If I should not
Marie |
