| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: certain hamlet called La Jussiere, he stopped to drink a glass of
syrup in a very poor, bare drinking shop. The hostess, a comely
woman, suckling a child, examined the traveller with kindly and
pitying eyes. "You are not of this department?" she asked. The
Arethusa told her he was English. "Ah!" she said, surprised. "We
have no English. We have many Italians, however, and they do very
well; they do not complain of the people of hereabouts. An
Englishman may do very well also; it will be something new." Here
was a dark saying, over which the Arethusa pondered as he drank his
grenadine; but when he rose and asked what was to pay, the light
came upon him in a flash. "O, POUR VOUS," replied the landlady,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: I should say that three hundred young men and maidens
danced. They advanced, they retreated, they cowered, they
pressed forward. They made supplication, arms to heaven
or forehead to ground, they received, they were grateful,
they circled fast in ease of mind, they hungered again and
were filled again, they flowed together, they made a great
square, chanting proudly!
Fray Ignatio beside me glowered, so far as so good a
man could glower. But Juan Lepe said, ``It is doubt and
difficulty, approach, reconciliation holy triumph! They
are acting out long pilgrimages and arrivals at sacred cities
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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 Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: ter's cottage! I did the next day.
"And it was I who found him lying face down
and his body in a puddle, just outside the little
wicket-gate.
"I had been called out that night to an urgent
case in the village, and on my way home at day-
break passed by the cottage. The door stood open.
My man helped me to carry him in. We laid him
on the couch. The lamp smoked, the fire was out,
the chill of the stormy night oozed from the cheer-
less yellow paper on the wall. 'Amy!' I called
Amy Foster |
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 War and the Future by H. G. Wells: battle line to the west. The wreckage of the graves was
Durereqsue. And here would be a fragment of marble angle and
here a split stone with an inscription. Splinters of coffins,
rusty iron crosses and the petals of tin flowers were trampled
into the mud, amidst the universal barbed wire. A little
distance down the slope is a brand new cemetery, with new metal
wreaths and even a few flowers; it is a disciplined array of
uniform wooden crosses, each with its list of soldiers' names.
Unless I am wholly mistaken in France no Germans will ever get a
chance for ever more to desecrate that second cemetery as they
have done its predecessor.
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