| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: slender evidences as you have done hitherto.
It is from you, eloquent oyster-merchants of Billingsgate, (just
ready to be called to the Bar, and quoif'd like your
sister-serjants,) that we expect the shortening the time, and
lessening the expences of law-suits: For I think you are observ'd
to bring your debates to a short issue; and even custom will
restrain you from taking the oyster, and leaving only the shell
to your client.
O ye physicians, (who in the figure of old women are to clean the
tripe in the markets) scour it as effectually as you have done
that of your patients, and the town will fare most deliciously on
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: 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
other's head stopped for the space of breath. In this
infinitesimal fraction of a second Byrne had the sense of being
really on his quest, of having reached the turn of the path, almost
Within the Tides |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: and tackle. The lift was of steel wire. We were confident that
it could stand the strain, but we doubted the holding-power of the
stays that held the mast.
The tide had two more hours to ebb (and it was the big run-out),
which meant that five hours must elapse ere the returning tide
would give us a chance to learn whether or not the sloop would
rise to it and right herself.
The bank was almost up and down, and at the bottom, directly
beneath us, the fast-ebbing tide left a pit of the vilest, illest-
smelling, illest-appearing muck to be seen in many a day's ride.
Said Cloudesley to me gazing down into it:
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: information, which seems taken from the stream sufficiently near to
the fountain-head: but it must be recollected that De Tisnacq
lived in dangerous times, and may have found it necessary to walk
warily in them; that through him had been sent, only the year
before, that famous letter from William of Orange, Horn, and Egmont,
the fate whereof may be read in Mr. Motley's fourth chapter; that
the crisis of the Netherlands which sprung out of that letter was
coming fast; and that, as De Tisnacq was on friendly terms with
Egmont, he may have felt his head at times somewhat loose on his
shoulders; especially if he had heard Alva say, as he wrote, "that
every time he saw the despatches of those three senors, they moved
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