| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: before St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, wavering like a drunken
man; the passers-by regarding him with eyes in which he read,
as in a glass, an image of the terror and horror that dwelt
within his own.
'I am afraid you are very ill, sir,' observed a woman,
stopping and gazing hard in his face. 'Can I do anything to
help you?'
'Ill?' said M'Guire. 'O God!' And then, recovering some
shadow of his self-command, 'Chronic, madam,' said he: 'a
long course of the dumb ague. But since you are so
compassionate - an errand that I lack the strength to carry
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: and told the story in my topsy-turvy way, and his wife heard, and
said so kindly, `Take it, Thomas, and oblige the young lady. I'd do
as much for our Jimmy any day if I had a spire of hair worth selling."
"Who was Jimmy?" asked Amy, who liked to have things explained
as they went along.
"Her son, she said, who was in the army. How friendly such
things make strangers feel, don't they? She talked away all the
time the man clipped, and diverted my mind nicely."
"Didn't you feel dreadfully when the first cut came?" asked
Meg, with a shiver.
"I took a last look at my hair while the man got his things,
Little Women |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: down--maybe into the heart of a worldwide violet there, off the edge
of the cliff, such as Bessie Bell saw or fancied she saw.
So many Ladies.
Bessie Bell leaned against the little fluted post of the gallery to
the cabin that she and Sister Helen Vincula lived in, and decided to
herself that, strange as it was, yet was it true that the whole
world was full of--Ladies.
There were yet stranger things for Bessie Bell to learn.
She had not for long played with those many little girls in all
sorts of clothes, and with larger girls, and with boys,--some with
short-striped-stocking-legs and some with long-striped-stocking-
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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 Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Of horrid Hell, can come a Diuell more damn'd
In euils, to top Macbeth
Mal. I grant him Bloody,
Luxurious, Auaricious, False, Deceitfull,
Sodaine, Malicious, smacking of euery sinne
That ha's a name. But there's no bottome, none
In my Voluptuousnesse: Your Wiues, your Daughters,
Your Matrons, and your Maides, could not fill vp
The Cesterne of my Lust, and my Desire
All continent Impediments would ore-beare
That did oppose my will. Better Macbeth,
Macbeth |
