| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: you have done me several courtesies, for which I was prepared to be
grateful. But there are duties which come before gratitude, and
offences which justly divide friends, far more acquaintances. Your
letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage is a document which, in my sight,
if you had filled me with bread when I was starving, if you had sat
up to nurse my father when he lay a-dying, would yet absolve me
from the bonds of gratitude. You know enough, doubtless, of the
process of canonisation to be aware that, a hundred years after the
death of Damien, there will appear a man charged with the painful
office of the DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. After that noble brother of mine,
and of all frail clay, shall have lain a century at rest, one shall
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The United States Bill of Rights: III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house,
without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war,
but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath
or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched,
and the persons or things to be seized.
V
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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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: I quite recognise that this must be annoying, and only my anxiety
not to lose a whole year through some stupid mistake has given
me the courage to do it. I laugh sometimes behind the book
at his disgusted face, and wish we could be photographed,
so that I may be reminded in twenty years' time, when the garden
is a bower of loveliness and I learned in all its ways,
of my first happy struggles and failures.
All through April he was putting the perennials we had sown in the autumn
into their permanent places, and all through April he went about with a
long piece of string making parallel lines down the borders of beautiful
exactitude and arranging the poor plants like soldiers at a review.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
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 Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: banker, known to be rich, that neither was considered by those who
had met them to be particularly intelligent or refined, and that
the wooing of the daughter had already become so marked as to be a
general subject of gossip. My friend was inclined to think my
conjecture correct, and willingly co-operated with me in a plan to
test the matter. We had no considerable sympathy with the snobbish
parents, whose servility to a title was so apparent; but the
daughter seemed to be an innocent and amiable creature, however
silly, and we determined to spare her the shame of an open scandal.
If our scheme should seem a little melodramatic, it must not be
forgotten that my friend was an author. The next morning, as the
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