| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: "What? Brooke standing for Middlemarch?"
"Worse than that. I really feel a little responsible. I always told
you Miss Brooke would be such a fine match. I knew there was a great
deal of nonsense in her--a flighty sort of Methodistical stuff.
But these things wear out of girls. However, I am taken by surprise
for once."
"What do you mean, Mrs. Cadwallader?" said Sir James. His fear lest
Miss Brooke should have run away to join the Moravian Brethren,
or some preposterous sect unknown to good society, was a little
allayed by the knowledge that Mrs. Cadwallader always made the worst
of things. "What has happened to Miss Brooke? Pray speak out."
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: toddling round with burdens half their own size. Like the dot upon
the little i, the baby's head seems a natural part of their childish
ego.
An economy of the kind in the matter of nurses is highly suggestive.
That it should be practicable thus to entrust one infant to another
proves the precociousness of children. But this surprising maturity
of the young implies by a law too well known to need explanation,
the consequent immaturity of the race. That which has less to grow
up to, naturally grows up to its limit sooner. It may even be
questioned whether it does not do so with the more haste; on the
same principle that a runner who has less distance to travel not
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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 Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Then, as their faces drew together, groan'd,
And slipt aside, and like a wounded life
Crept down into the hollows of the wood;
There, while the rest were loud in merrymaking,
Had his dark hour unseen, and rose and past
Bearing a lifelong hunger in his heart.
So these were wed, and merrily rang the bells,
And merrily ran the years, seven happy years,
Seven happy years of health and competence,
And mutual love and honorable toil;
With children; first a daughter. In him woke,
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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 Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: grey twilight of the dawn, the haven was seen to lie
deserted, and the yacht had long since disappeared.
'Who are you?' he cried.
'I am a traveller,' said I.
'And where do you come from?' he asked.
'I am going by the first train to London,' I replied.
In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa
with her bag of jewels landed on the shores of England; in
this silent fashion, without history or name, she took her
place among the millions of a new country.
Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer,
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