| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: On the man that laid him low;
And thrice the living Cameron
Told the dead Cameron, no.
"Thrice have you seen me, brother,
But now shall see me no more,
Till you meet your angry fathers
Upon the farther shore.
Thrice have I spoken, and now,
Before the cock be heard,
I take my leave for ever
With the naming of a word.
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: should be overthrown for you personally. The payment of the premium is
all that is required to protect--"
"The money-box," said the lunatic, sharply interrupting him.
"Ah! naturally; yes. I see that Monsieur understands business."
"Yes," said the madman. "I established the Territorial Bank in the Rue
des Fosses-Montmartre at Paris in 1798."
"For," resumed Gaudissart, going back to his premium, "in order to
meet the payments on the intellectual capital which each man
recognizes and esteems in himself, it is of course necessary that each
should pay a certain premium, three per cent; an annual due of three
per cent. Thus, by the payment of this trifling sum, a mere nothing,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: of the superior stature and size of old women and geese in the
days of other years, by those praisers of the past who held the
comfortable opinion of the gradual degeneracy of mankind.
All particulars of this legend Hobbie called to mind as he passed
along the moor. He also remembered, that, since the catastrophe
had taken place, the scene of it had been avoided, at least after
night-fall, by all human beings, as being the ordinary resort of
kelpies, spunkies, and other demons, once the companions of the
witch's diabolical revels, and now continuing to rendezvous upon
the same spot, as if still in attendance on their transformed
mistress. Hobbie's natural hardihood, however, manfully combated
|
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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: are seen to go off in vast flights like a cloud. And sometimes
again, when the wind grows fair, they go away a few and a few as
they come, not staying at all upon the coast.
Note. - This passing and re-passing of the swallows is observed
nowhere so much, that I have heard of, or in but few other places,
except on this eastern coast, namely, from above Harwich to the
east point of Norfolk, called Winterton Ness, North, which is all
right against Holland. We know nothing of them any farther north,
the passage of the sea being, as I suppose, too broad from
Flamborough Head and the shore of Holderness in Yorkshire, etc.
I find very little remarkable on this side of Suffolk, but what is
|
