| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: The Abraham Lincoln had been well chosen and equipped
for her new destination. She was a frigate of great speed,
fitted with high-pressure engines which admitted a pressure
of seven atmospheres. Under this the Abraham Lincoln attained
the mean speed of nearly eighteen knots and a third an hour--
a considerable speed, but, nevertheless, insufficient to grapple
with this gigantic cetacean.
The interior arrangements of the frigate corresponded to its
nautical qualities. I was well satisfied with my cabin,
which was in the after part, opening upon the gunroom.
"We shall be well off here," said I to Conseil.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom) but this
being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand
breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand, for those women who
miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the
year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children
of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, How
this number shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have
already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly
impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can
neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither
build houses, (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they
A Modest Proposal |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: was a part of the Durbeyfield temperament. Tess really
wished to walk uprightly, while her father did nothing
of the kind; but she resembled him in being content
with immediate and small achievements, and in having no
mind for laborious effort towards such petty social
advancement as could alone be effected by a family so
heavily handicapped as the once powerful d'Urbervilles
were now.
There was, it might be said, the energy of her mother's
unexpected family, as well as the natural energy of
Tess's years, rekindled after the experience which had
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: gentleman as lewd as herself. I have writ these to save my friends
from penury, yet shewing my scorn for such follies and for them that
praise them by calling the one As You Like It, meaning that it is not
as _I_ like it, and the other Much Ado About Nothing, as it truly is.
And now these two filthy pieces drive their nobler fellows from the
stage, where indeed I cannot have my lady physician presented at all,
she being too honest a woman for the taste of the town. Wherefore I
humbly beg your Majesty to give order that a theatre be endowed out of
the public revenue for the playing of those pieces of mine which no
merchant will touch, seeing that his gain is so much greater with the
worse than with the better. Thereby you shall also encourage other
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