| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.
V
The Dumb Soldier
When the grass was closely mown,
Walking on the lawn alone,
In the turf a hole I found,
And hid a soldier underground.
Spring and daisies came apace;
Grasses hid my hiding place;
Grasses run like a green sea
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: chatter of tongues held sway, perceived that the look of
straightforward indignation had already vanished; her mother was
evidently casting about in her mind for some method of escape, or
bright spot, or sudden illumination which should show to the
satisfaction of everybody that all had happened, miraculously but
incontestably, for the best.
"It's detestable--quite detestable!" she repeated, but in tones of no
great assurance; and then her face lit up with a smile which,
tentative at first, soon became almost assured. "Nowadays, people
don't think so badly of these things as they used to do," she began.
"It will be horribly uncomfortable for them sometimes, but if they are
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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 A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: have seen what we saw that day, Thorndike.
"The amphitheatre was packed, from the bull-ring to the highest row
- twelve thousand people in one circling mass, one slanting, solid
mass - royalties, nobles, clergy, ladies, gentlemen, state
officials, generals, admirals, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, thieves,
merchants, brokers, cooks, housemaids, scullery-maids, doubtful
women, dudes, gamblers, beggars, loafers, tramps, American ladies,
gentlemen, preachers, English ladies, gentlemen, preachers, German
ditto, French ditto, and so on and so on, all the world
represented: Spaniards to admire and praise, foreigners to enjoy
and go home and find fault - there they were, one solid, sloping,
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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 Mother by Owen Wister: circumstances which universal knowledge renders it needless to mention,
and I will pass to the second perturbation."
"A sum of money was suddenly left me. Then for the first time I understood
why I had during my boyhood been so periodically sent to see a cross old
brother of my mother's, who lived near Cold Spring on the Hudson, and
whom we called Uncle Snaggletooth when no one could hear us. Uncle
Godfrey (for I have called him by his right name ever since) died and left
me what in those old days six years ago was still a large amount. To-day
we understand what true riches mean. But in those bygone times six years
ago, a million dollars was a sum considerable enough to be still seen, as
it were, with the naked eye. That was my bequest from Uncle Godfrey, and
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