| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: throw a weight of self-control into the scale against misfortune;
and happily we can study to some purpose, both to increase our
pleasure in success and to lessen our distress caused by what goes
ill. It is not only in cases of great disasters, however, that the
angler needs self-control. He is perpetually called upon to use it
to withstand small exasperations."--SIR EDWARD GREY: Fly-Fishing.
Every moment of life, I suppose, is more or less of a turning-point.
Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than
gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud of chances, and if we
were always conscious of them they would worry us almost to death.
But happily our sense of uncertainty is soothed and cushioned by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: snow-flakes.
This fit of hot anger was succeeded by a sudden sadness, by the
darkening passage of a thought that ran over the scorched surface of
his heart, like upon a barren plain, and after a fiercer assault of
sunrays, the melancholy and cooling shadow of a cloud. He realized
that he had had a shock--not a violent or rending blow, that can be
seen, resisted, returned, forgotten, but a thrust, insidious and
penetrating, that had stirred all those feelings, concealed and cruel,
which the arts of the devil, the fears of mankind--God's infinite
compassion, perhaps--keep chained deep down in the inscrutable
twilight of our breasts. A dark curtain seemed to rise before him, and
Tales of Unrest |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: to?" God said, "Do I know whom they speak of?" And I saw they were
looking up at the roof; but out in the sunshine, God lay.
"--dear Lord!"
"Dear Lord."
"Our children's children, Lord, shall rise and call thee blessed."
"Our children's children, Lord."--I said to God, "The grapes are crying!"
God said, "Still! I hear them"--"shall call thee blessed."
"Shall call thee blessed."
"Pour forth more wine upon us, Lord."
"More wine."
"More wine."
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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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: arm, some speechless, others noisy and quarrelsome, the
votaries of the New Year go meandering in and out and
cannoning one against another; and now and again, one
falls and lies as he has fallen. Before night, so many
have gone to bed or the police office, that the streets
seem almost clearer. And as GUISARDS and FIRST-FOOTERS
are now not much seen except in country places, when once
the New Year has been rung in and proclaimed at the Tron
railings, the festivities begin to find their way indoors
and something like quiet returns upon the town. But
think, in these piled LANDS, of all the senseless
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