| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: against her pain!
Darrow kept his head high and his eyes steady. "It must be
as you wish; and yet it's not like you to be afraid."
"Afraid?"
"To talk things out--to face them."
"It's for YOU to face this--not me!"
"All I ask is to face it--but with you." Once more he
paused. "Won't you tell me what Miss Viner told you?"
"Oh, she's generous--to the utmost!" The pain caught her
like a physical throe. It suddenly came to her how the girl
must have loved him to be so generous--what memories there
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: that their river would become a rich river, that they would be
able to get cheap power for all sorts of works, and that they
would have electric light in all their houses. Then they
carried me shoulder high through the village, and sent
telegrams to Lenin, to Zinoviev, to everybody they could
think of, and since then we have had nothing but help from
them.
"Most of our energy at present has to be spent on mending
and making railways and roads for the use of the army.
Over 11,000 versts of railway are under construction, and
we have finished the railway from Arzamas to Shikhran.
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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 The Jolly Corner by Henry James: looked - to shift and expand and contract.
It was as if there had been something within it, protected by
indistinctness and corresponding in extent with the opaque surface
behind, the painted panels of the last barrier to his escape, of
which the key was in his pocket. The indistinctness mocked him
even while he stared, affected him as somehow shrouding or
challenging certitude, so that after faltering an instant on his
step he let himself go with the sense that here WAS at last
something to meet, to touch, to take, to know - something all
unnatural and dreadful, but to advance upon which was the condition
for him either of liberation or of supreme defeat. The penumbra,
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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 Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: clusters, here and there; presenting sometimes the fantastic appearance of
old ruined castles or giant graves, the work of human hands.
Kraal - A sheepfold.
Krantz - A precipice.
Sluit - A deep fissure, generally dry, in which the superfluous torrents of
water are carried from the karoo plains after thunderstorms.
Stoep - A porch.
I. DREAM LIFE AND REAL LIFE; A LITTLE AFRICAN STORY.
Little Jannita sat alone beside a milk-bush. Before her and behind her
stretched the plain, covered with red sand and thorny karoo bushes; and
here and there a milk-bush, looking like a bundle of pale green rods tied
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