| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: her name now. Strange to say, she had grown poorer and prettier,
two steps which it had not seemed within her power to take.
She had accomplished a double progress, towards the light and
towards distress. She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day
when she had so resolutely entered his chamber, only her rags were two
months older now, the holes were larger, the tatters more sordid.
It was the same harsh voice, the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan,
the same free, wild, and vacillating glance. She had besides,
more than formerly, in her face that indescribably terrified
and lamentable something which sojourn in a prison adds to wretchedness.
She had bits of straw and hay in her hair, not like Ophelia
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: For those two suns of thine have lit
A fire within her heart.
Adventures seeking thou dost rove,
To others bringing woe;
Thou scatterest wounds, but, ah, the balm
To heal them dost withhold!
Say, valiant youth, and so may God
Thy enterprises speed,
Didst thou the light mid Libya's sands
Or Jaca's rocks first see?
Did scaly serpents give thee suck?
Don Quixote |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: The Economist 1
On Horsemanship 1
The Sportsman 1
The Cavalry General 1
The Apology 1
On Revenues 1
The Hiero 1
The Agesilaus 1
The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians 2
Text in brackets "{}" is my transliteration of Greek text into
English using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table. The
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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 The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: knife. Besides--if you get careless--you'll scrape
too hard: hence little holes in the completed buckskin.
Also--if you get careless--you will probably
leave the finest, tiniest shreds of grain, and each of
them means a hard transparent spot in the product.
Furthermore, once having started in on the job, you
are like the little boy who caught the trolley: you
cannot let go. It must be finished immediately, all
at one heat, before the hide stiffens.
Be it understood, your first enthusiasm has evaporated,
and you are thinking of fifty pleasant things
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