| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: which nothing else could give me. Bear with me for a moment
longer, Edward, for she and I have been together many years; and
although I believe that in resigning her to you I put the seal upon
her future happiness, I find it needs an effort.'
He pressed her tenderly to his bosom, and after a minute's pause,
resumed:
'I have done you wrong, sir, and I ask your forgiveness--in no
common phrase, or show of sorrow; but with earnestness and
sincerity. In the same spirit, I acknowledge to you both that the
time has been when I connived at treachery and falsehood--which if
I did not perpetrate myself, I still permitted--to rend you two
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: If then the present race of mankind err,
Seek in yourselves the cause, and find it there.
Herein thou shalt confess me no false spy.
"Forth from his plastic hand, who charm'd beholds
Her image ere she yet exist, the soul
Comes like a babe, that wantons sportively
Weeping and laughing in its wayward moods,
As artless and as ignorant of aught,
Save that her Maker being one who dwells
With gladness ever, willingly she turns
To whate'er yields her joy. Of some slight good
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: tell you what broke me up about that letter," said he. "My old
man played the fiddle, played it all out of tune: one of the
things he played was _Martyrdom,_ I remember--it was all
martyrdom to me. He was a pig of a father, and I was a pig of
a son; but it sort of came over me I would like to hear that
fiddle squeak again. Natural," he added; "I guess we're all
beasts."
"All sons are, I guess," said I. "I have the same trouble on my
conscience: we can shake hands on that." Which (oddly
enough, perhaps) we did.
Amongst the papers we found a considerable sprinkling of
|
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 Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: Christian faim'ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can
plain-boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets." And with
these words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had
passed on to his study and shut the door behind him.
Such was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston,
where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a neighbouring bonnet-laird, and an
eighteenth cousin of the lady's, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim
house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand,
clean, capable, notable; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a
blood horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and
colour, she ran the house with her whole intemperate soul, in a bustle,
|
