| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: with people of the greatest regularity, and best characters. For
the same reason, I am sorry that a certain prelate, who
notwithstanding his confinement (in December 1723), still
preserves his healthy, chearful countenance, cannot come in time
to be a nurse at court.
I likewise earnestly intreat the maids of honour, (then ensigns
and captains of the guard) that, at their first setting out, they
have some regard to their former station, and do not run wild
through all the infamous houses about town: That the present
grooms of the bed-chamber (then maids of honour) would not eat
chalk and lime in their green-sickness: And in general, that 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 Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: have passed this way. Directly he had spoken the recollection of
his parting with Tom came up in his mind with amazing vividness:
the silent villagers, the angry gnome, the one-eyed wine-seller,
Bernardino. Why! These two unspeakable frights must be that man's
aunts - affiliated to the devil.
Whatever they had been once it was impossible to imagine what use
such feeble creatures could be to the devil, now, in the world of
the living. Which was Lucilla and which was Erminia? They were
now things without a name. A moment of suspended animation
followed Byrne's words. The sorceress with the spoon ceased
stirring the mess in the iron pot, the very trembling of the
Within the Tides |
