| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: There were few people there, and these for the most part
quiescent on the benches. Morris seemed to attract no remark,
which was a good thing; but, on the other hand, he was making no
progress in his quest. Something must be done, something must be
risked. Every passing instant only added to his dangers.
Summoning all his courage, he stopped a porter, and asked him if
he remembered receiving a barrel by the morning train. He was
anxious to get information, for the barrel belonged to a friend.
'It is a matter of some moment,' he added, 'for it contains
specimens.'
'I was not here this morning, sir,' responded the porter,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: Whistling boy down the lane I stroll,
All untouched by the blows of fate,
Time turns back and I'm young of soul,
Dreaming there by the open grate.
Improvement
The joy of life is living it, or so it seems to me;
In finding shackles on your wrists, then struggling till you're free;
In seeing wrongs and righting them, in dreaming splendid dreams,
Then toiling till the vision is as real as moving streams.
The happiest mortal on the earth is he who ends his day
By leaving better than he found to bloom along the way.
Just Folks |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: friends.
They must.
Then neither like and like nor unlike and unlike are friends.
I suppose not.
And yet there is a further consideration: may not all these notions of
friendship be erroneous? but may not that which is neither good nor evil
still in some cases be the friend of the good?
How do you mean? he said.
Why really, I said, the truth is that I do not know; but my head is dizzy
with thinking of the argument, and therefore I hazard the conjecture, that
'the beautiful is the friend,' as the old proverb says. Beauty is
Lysis |
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 The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: laid out skeleton tours through its ideal regions, and perhaps,
as in the mapping beforehand of merely mundane travels, one element
of attraction has always consisted in the possible revision of one's
routes.
Besides, there is a fascination about the foreign merely because it
is such. Distance lends enchantment to the views of others, and
never more so than when those views are religious visions.
An enthusiast has certainly a greater chance of being taken for a
god among a people who do not know him intimately as a man. So with
his doctrines. The imported is apt to seem more important than the
home-made; as the far-off bewitches more easily than the near. But
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