| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: house, sustained in her part by the sympathizing glances of the old
merchant, submitted with wonderful courage to the minute questioning
and stupid, or frivolous, comments of her visitors. At every rap upon
her door, every footfall echoing in the street, she hid her emotions
by starting topics relating to the interests of the town, and she
raised such a lively discussion on the quality of ciders, which was
ably seconded by the old merchant, that the company almost forgot to
watch her, finding her countenance quite natural, and her composure
imperturbable. The public prosecutor and one of the judges of the
revolutionary tribunal was taciturn, observing attentively every
change in her face; every now and then they addressed her some
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: Novastoshnah, or North East Point, on the Island of St. Paul, away
and away in the Bering Sea. Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me
the tale when he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to
Japan, and I took him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him
for a couple of days till he was fit to fly back to St. Paul's
again. Limmershin is a very quaint little bird, but he knows how
to tell the truth.
Nobody comes to Novastoshnah except on business, and the only
people who have regular business there are the seals. They come
in the summer months by hundreds and hundreds of thousands out of
the cold gray sea. For Novastoshnah Beach has the finest
The Jungle Book |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: making a very deep gulf or bay between those two points of
Winterton and the Spurn Head; so that the ships going north are
obliged to stretch away to sea from Wintertonness, and leaving the
sight of land in that deep bay which I have mentioned, that reaches
to Lynn and the shore of Lincolnshire, they go, I say, N. or still
NNW. to meet the shore of Holderness, which I said runs out into
the sea again at the Spurn; and the first land they make or desire
to make, is called as above, Flamborough Head, so that
Wintertonness and Flamborough Head are the two extremes of this
course, there is, as I said, the Spurn Head indeed between; but as
it lies too far in towards the Humber, they keep out to the north
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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 Rescue by Joseph Conrad: really the wish to secure hostages. Distrusting the fierce
impulses of his followers he had hastened to put them into
Belarab's keeping. But everything in the Settlement seemed to him
suspicious: Belarab's absence, Jorgenson's refusal to make over
at once the promised supply of arms and ammunition. And now that
white man had by the power of his speech got them away from
Belarab's people. So much influence filled Daman with wonder and
awe. A recluse for many years in the most obscure corner of the
Archipelago he felt himself surrounded by intrigues. But the
alliance was a great thing, too. He did not want to quarrel. He
was quite willing for the time being to accept Lingard's
The Rescue |
