| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shown in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head.
XXII
Marching Song
Bring the comb and play upon it!
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: savages? You fear for her safety? Give yourself no uneasiness
about her. Dear me, she's in a nursery! and she's got more than
eighteen hundred nurses. It would distress the garrison to suspect
that you think they can't take care of her. They think they can.
They would tell you so themselves. You see, the Seventh Cavalry
has never had a child of its very own before, and neither has the
Ninth Dragoons; and so they are like all new mothers, they think
there is no other child like theirs, no other child so wonderful,
none that is so worthy to be faithfully and tenderly looked after
and protected. These bronzed veterans of mine are very good
mothers, I think, and wiser than some other mothers; for they let
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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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: reading in that fool-book that I have just burned and be damned to it,
I take ever the least thought of any stricken thing but just yourself?
Night after night I could have grat to see you sitting there your lone.
And what was I to do? You are here under my honour; would you punish
me for that? Is it for that that you would spurn a loving servant?"
At the word, with a small, sudden motion, she clung near to me. I
raised her face to mine, I kissed it, and she bowed her brow upon my
bosom, clasping me tight. I saw in a mere whirl like a man drunken.
Then I heard her voice sound very small and muffled in my clothes.
"Did you kiss her truly?" she asked.
There went through me so great a heave of surprise that I was all shook
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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 Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: counting the natural products. Item: the farms of Grassol and Guadet,
each worth three thousand six hundred francs a year. Item: the
vineyard of Belle-Rose, yielding in ordinary years sixteen thousand
francs; total, forty-six thousand two hundred francs a year. Item: the
patrimonial mansion at Bordeaux taxed for nine hundred francs. Item: a
handsome house, between court and garden in Paris, rue de la
Pepiniere, taxed for fifteen hundred francs. These pieces of property,
the title-deeds of which I hold, are derived from our father and
mother, except the house in Paris, which we bought ourselves. We must
also reckon in the furniture of the two houses, and that of the
chateau of Lanstrac, estimated at four hundred and fifty thousand
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