| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: of splinters, of ruined woodwork. The masts rose from
that chaos like big trees above a matted undergrowth.
The interstices of that mass of wreckage were full of
something whitish, sluggish, stirring--of something that
was like a greasy fog. The smoke of the invisible fire
was coming up again, was trailing, like a poisonous thick
mist in some valley choked with dead wood. Already
lazy wisps were beginning to curl upwards amongst the
mass of splinters. Here and there a piece of timber,
stuck upright, resembled a post. Half of a fife-rail had
been shot through the foresail, and the sky made a
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: one after the other, and--well, it is beyond my power to tell you
what varieties of indignation and abuse fell upon me. It seems
that I had voted against the bill to charter the Mendip Extension
Railroad Co. I had been obliged to vote for or against so many
things, that it was impossible to recollect them all. However, I
procured the printed journal, and, sure enough! there, among the
nays, was "Strongitharm." It was not a week after that--and I was
still suffering in mind and body--when the newspapers in the
interest of the Rancocus and Great Western Consolidated accused me
(not by name, but the same thing--you know how they do it) of being
guilty of taking bribes. Mr. Filch, of the Shinnebaug Consolidated
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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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: a conflagration. Heat or fire releases, they say, a bubble of air left
in the heart of the wood by a gnawing worm. "Inde amor, inde
burgundus." We tremble when we see the structure we had so carefully
erected between the logs rolling down like an avalanche. Oh! to build
and stir and play with fire when we love is the material development
of our thoughts.
It was at this moment that I entered the room. Rastignac gave a jump
and said:--
"Ah! there you are, dear Horace; how long have you been here?"
"Just come."
"Ah!"
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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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: reverse of friendship, in that it takes place on a lower
level than the characters of any of the parties would warrant
us to expect. The society talk of even the most brilliant
man is of greatly less account than what you will get from
him in (as the French say) a little committee. And Thoreau
wanted geniality; he had not enough of the superficial, even
at command; he could not swoop into a parlour and, in the
naval phrase, "cut out" a human being from that dreary port;
nor had he inclination for the task. I suspect he loved
books and nature as well and near as warmly as he loved his
fellow-creatures, - a melancholy, lean degeneration of the
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