| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: told me how disappointed you have been this summer in Betsy and Doctor and
little Black-and-white, and that now Barney has fallen into disgrace, since he
kept you so long in the ford the other day, but I want to tell you something.
You must not stop loving them at all because they do what you call cruel
things. You have heard the old rhyme:--
"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God has made them so:
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For 'tis their nature to."
"Oh, yes, I know that," said Tattine, "and I don't think it's all qu�te true;
our dogs don't bite (I suppose it means biting people), bad as they are."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: that the officers suffered any willingly to lie there; but I have heard
that in a great pit in Finsbury, in the parish of Cripplegate, it lying
open then to the fields, for it was not then walled about, [many] came
and threw themselves in, and expired there, before they threw any
earth upon them; and that when they came to bury others and found
them there, they were quite dead, though not cold.
This may serve a little to describe the dreadful condition of that day,
though it is impossible to say anything that is able to give a true idea
of it to those who did not see it, other than this, that it was indeed
very, very, very dreadful, and such as no tongue can express.
I got admittance into the churchyard by being acquainted with the
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: prisoners of state, to guard against a rescue or a revolt.
The people rushed into the prison, with the cry --
"Death to the traitors! To the gallows with Cornelius de
Witt! Death! death!"
Chapter 4
The Murderers
The young man with his hat slouched over his eyes, still
leaning on the arm of the officer, and still wiping from
time to time his brow with his handkerchief, was watching in
a corner of the Buytenhof, in the shade of the overhanging
weather-board of a closed shop, the doings of the infuriated
The Black Tulip |
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 Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: LXXIX
Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;
But now my gracious numbers are decay'd,
And my sick Muse doth give an other place.
I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen;
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.
He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word
From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,
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