| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: Mrs. Hob had said her say at Cauldstaneslap. "Daft-like!" she had
pronounced it. "A jaiket that'll no meet! Whaur's the sense of a
jaiket that'll no button upon you, if it should come to be weet? What
do ye ca' thir things? Demmy brokens, d'ye say? They'll be brokens wi'
a vengeance or ye can win back! Weel, I have nae thing to do wi' it -
it's no good taste." Clem, whose purse had thus metamorphosed his
sister, and who was not insensible to the advertisement, had come to the
rescue with a "Hoot, woman! What do you ken of good taste that has
never been to the ceety?" And Hob, looking on the girl with pleased
smiles, as she timidly displayed her finery in the midst of the dark
kitchen, had thus ended the dispute: "The cutty looks weel," he had
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: ends waggling to the roll. Nothing was done on
board, and Falk told me how he had often listened
to the water washing about the dark engine-room
where the engines, stilled for ever, were decaying
slowly into a mass of rust, as the stilled heart de-
cays within the lifeless body. At first, after the
loss of the motive power, the tiller had been thor-
oughly secured by lashings. But in course of time
these had rotted, chafed, rusted, parting one by
one: and the rudder, freed, banged heavily to and
fro night and day, sending dull shocks through the
Falk |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: is; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than
ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet
light far, for those who else were homeless.
This, then, I believe to be,--will you not admit it to be,--the
woman's true place and power? But do not you see that, to fulfil
this, she must--as far as one can use such terms of a human
creature--be incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must be
right, or nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good;
instinctively, infallibly wise--wise, not for self-development, but
for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her
husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with
|
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: them of old, or rather how they fancied men used to write them; for,
consider, if they had really known how the thing was done, they must
needs have been able to do it themselves. Thus Callimachus, the
favourite of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and librarian of his Museum, is the
most distinguished grammarian, critic, and poet of his day, and has for
pupils Eratosthenes, Apollonius Rhodius, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and
a goodly list more. He is an encyclopaedia in himself. There is
nothing the man does not know, or probably, if we spoke more correctly,
nothing he does not know about. He writes on history, on the Museum, on
barbarous names, on the wonders of the world, on public games, on
colonisation, on winds, on birds, on the rivers of the world, and--
|
