| 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: within, as it seems to him, but from without. I was proud and glad
to go to school; had I been let alone, I could have borne up like
any hero; but there was around me, in all my native town, a
conspiracy of lamentation: "Poor little boy, he is going away -
unkind little boy, he is going to leave us"; so the unspoken
burthen followed me as I went, with yearning and reproach. And at
length, one melancholy afternoon in the early autumn, and at a
place where it seems to me, looking back, it must be always autumn
and generally Sunday, there came suddenly upon the face of all I
saw - the long empty road, the lines of the tall houses, the church
upon the hill, the woody hillside garden - a look of such a
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: "You must do as you like about your house," said he, "where I told
you I have no thought of going; but this is a public place."
"It's a place where I have private business," said I. "I have no
idea of a hound like you eavesdropping, and I give you notice to
clear out."
"I don't take it, though," says Case.
"I'll show you, then," said I.
"We'll have to see about that," said he.
He was quick with his hands, but he had neither the height nor the
weight, being a flimsy creature alongside a man like me, and,
besides, I was blazing to that height of wrath that I could have
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q? What comes next?
After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely
visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only
reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it
would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he
was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q--R--. Here he
knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the
urn, and proceeded. "Then R ..." He braced himself. He clenched
himself.
Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a broiling
sea with six biscuits and a flask of water--endurance and justice,
To the Lighthouse |
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 Menexenus by Plato: the enemy was only too glad to be quit of us. Yet in this war we lost many
brave men, such as were those who fell owing to the ruggedness of the
ground at the battle of Corinth, or by treason at Lechaeum. Brave men,
too, were those who delivered the Persian king, and drove the
Lacedaemonians from the sea. I remind you of them, and you must celebrate
them together with me, and do honour to their memories.
Such were the actions of the men who are here interred, and of others who
have died on behalf of their country; many and glorious things I have
spoken of them, and there are yet many more and more glorious things
remaining to be told--many days and nights would not suffice to tell of
them. Let them not be forgotten, and let every man remind their
|
