| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: the sun, make us eat them and drink them for our diet. Blind us to
the offences of our beloved, cleanse them from our memories, take
them out of our mouths for ever. Let all here before Thee carry
and measure with the false balances of love, and be in their own
eyes and in all conjunctures the most guilty. Help us at the same
time with the grace of courage, that we be none of us cast down
when we sit lamenting amid the ruins of our happiness or our
integrity: touch us with fire from the altar, that we may be up
and doing to rebuild our city: in the name and by the method of
him in whose words of prayer we now conclude.
FOR SELF-FORGETFULNESS
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: intrigues and immoral practices.
If, then, the men who conduct the government of an
aristocracy sometimes endeavor to corrupt the people, the heads
of a democracy are themselves corrupt. In the former case the
morality of the people is directly assailed; in the latter an
indirect influence is exercised upon the people which is still
more to be dreaded.
As the rulers of democratic nations are almost always
exposed to the suspicion of dishonorable conduct, they in some
measure lend the authority of the Government to the base
practices of which they are accused. They thus afford an example
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: Upper India and a wheat Province, where a man wants a large head and
a touch of imagination if he is to turn out a satisfactory balance-
sheet.
He was wonderfully narrow-minded in business, and, being new to the
country, had no notion that Indian banking is totally distinct from
Home work. Like most clever self-made men, he had much simplicity
in his nature; and, somehow or other, had construed the ordinarily
polite terms of his letter of engagement into a belief that the
Directors had chosen him on account of his special and brilliant
talents, and that they set great store by him. This notion grew and
crystallized; thus adding to his natural North-country conceit.
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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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: who instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its
beauty; in a few moments more its mechanism would be irreparably
injured."
"Take away your hand, father!" entreated Annie, turning pale.
"Here is my child; let it rest on his innocent hand. There,
perhaps, its life will revive and its colors grow brighter than
ever."
Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. The
butterfly then appeared to recover the power of voluntary motion,
while its hues assumed much of their original lustre, and the
gleam of starlight, which was its most ethereal attribute, again
Mosses From An Old Manse |
