| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: green walk, among a wilderness of flowers lighted up by a hot ray
of sunlight, I saw Juliette--Juliette and her husband. The pretty
little girl held her mother by the hand, and it was easy to see
that the lady had quickened her pace somewhat at the child's
ambiguous phrase. Taken aback by the sight of a total stranger,
who bowed with a tolerably awkward air, she looked at me with a
coolly courteous expression and an adorable pout, in which I, who
knew her secret, could read the full extent of her
disappointment. I sought, but sought in vain, to remember any of
the elegant phrases so laboriously prepared.
This momentary hesitation gave the lady's husband time to come
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an
important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night
watches on a whaling ground) the command of the ship's deck is also
his; therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he
should nominally live apart from the men before the mast, and be in
some way distinguished as their professional superior; though always,
by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.
Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is
this--the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships
and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the
captain; and so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers
Moby Dick |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: laughing when the plains drivers asked the reason.
Little Toomai attended to Kala Nag's supper, and as evening
fell, wandered through the camp, unspeakably happy, in search of a
tom-tom. When an Indian child's heart is full, he does not run
about and make a noise in an irregular fashion. He sits down to a
sort of revel all by himself. And Little Toomai had been spoken
to by Petersen Sahib! If he had not found what he wanted, I
believe he would have been ill. But the sweetmeat seller in the
camp lent him a little tom-tom--a drum beaten with the flat of
the hand--and he sat down, cross-legged, before Kala Nag as the
stars began to come out, the tom-tom in his lap, and he thumped
The Jungle Book |
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 Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
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