| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: fact we are at one, and how widely our appreciations vary. There
is something wrong here; either with you or me. It is possible,
for instance, that you, who seem to have so many ears in Kalawao,
had heard of the affair of Mr. Chapman's money, and were singly
struck by Damien's intended wrong-doing. I was struck with that
also, and set it fairly down; but I was struck much more by the
fact that he had the honesty of mind to be convinced. I may here
tell you that it was a long business; that one of his colleagues
sat with him late into the night, multiplying arguments and
accusations; that the father listened as usual with "perfect good-
nature and perfect obstinacy"; but at the last, when he was
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: till night, and quite stare it out of countenance, sooner than stay
at home and have the truth told me by enigmatic aunts. Do you know
my Aunt Bertha? she, in particular, spends her time propounding obscure
questions for my solution. I get so tired and worried trying to guess
the answers, which are always truths supposed to be good for me to hear.
'Why do you wear your hair on your forehead?' she asks,--and that sets me off
wondering why I do wear it on my forehead, and what she wants to know for,
or whether she does know and only wants to know if I will answer truthfully.
'I am sure I don't know, aunt,' I say meekly, after puzzling over it
for ever so long; 'perhaps my maid knows. Shall I ring and ask her?'
And then she informs me that I wear it so to hide an ugly line she says
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: on foot.
The third Tartar column, on its way to Irkutsk, had left
plain traces: here a dead horse, there an abandoned cart.
The bodies of unfortunate Siberians lay along the road,
principally at the entrances to villages. Nadia, overcoming
her repugnance, looked at all these corpses!
The chief danger lay, not before, but behind. The ad-
vance guard of the Emir's army, commanded by Ivan
Ogareff, might at any moment appear. The boats sent
down the lower Yenisei must by this time have reached
Krasnoiarsk and been made use of. The road was there-
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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 The Apology by Xenophon: lessons, and apter to forget the lessons I have learnt. And if to
these be added the consciousness of failing powers, the sting of self-
reproach, what prospect have I of any further joy in living? It may
be, you know," he added, "that God out of his great kindness is
intervening in my behalf[14] to suffer me to close my life in the
ripeness of age, and by the gentlest of deaths. For if at this time
sentence of death be passed upon me, it is plain I shall be allowed to
meet an end which, in the opinion of those who have studied the
matter, is not only the easiest in itself, but one which will cause
the least trouble to one's friends,[15] while engendering the deepest
longing for the departed. For of necessity he will only be thought of
The Apology |
