| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: but London and Sydney, or London and Melbourne, or London and
Adelaide, perhaps with Hobart Town added for those of smaller
tonnage. One could almost have believed, as her gray-whiskered
second mate used to say of the old Duke of S-, that they knew the
road to the Antipodes better than their own skippers, who, year in,
year out, took them from London - the place of captivity - to some
Australian port where, twenty-five years ago, though moored well
and tight enough to the wooden wharves, they felt themselves no
captives, but honoured guests.
XXXIV.
These towns of the Antipodes, not so great then as they are now,
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: weeds. And then, there is no end to the infinite variety of
the olive-yards themselves. Even the colour is indeterminate
and continually shifting: now you would say it was green, now
gray, now blue; now tree stands above tree, like "cloud on
cloud," massed into filmy indistinctness; and now, at the
wind's will, the whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken up
with little momentary silverings and shadows. But every one
sees the world in his own way. To some the glad moment may
have arrived on other provocations; and their recollection may
be most vivid of the stately gait of women carrying burthens
on their heads; of tropical effects, with canes and naked rock
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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 Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: should be warmer together, but there's not room enough for
two,' he added.
'I'll find a place,' said Nikita. 'But I must cover up the
horse first--he sweated so, poor thing. Let go!' he added,
drawing the drugget from under Vasili Andreevich.
Having got the drugget he folded it in two, and after taking
off the breechband and pad, covered Mukhorty with it.
'Anyhow it will be warmer, silly!' he said, putting back the
breechband and the pad on the horse over the drugget. Then
having finished that business he returned to the sledge, and
addressing Vasili Andreevich, said: 'You won't need the
Master and Man |
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 Paz by Honore de Balzac: by way of affirmation.
Madame Laginska was silent, examining Adam. With her feet extended
upon a cushion and her head poised like that of a bird on the edge of
its nest listening to the noises in a grove, she would have seemed
enchanting even to a blase man. Fair and slender, and wearing her hair
in curls, she was not unlike those semi-romantic pictures in the
Keepsakes, especially when dressed, as she was this morning, in a
breakfast gown of Persian silk, the folds of which could not disguise
the beauty of her figure or the slimness of her waist. The silk with
its brilliant colors being crossed upon the bosom showed the spring of
the neck,--its whiteness contrasting delightfully against the tones of
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