| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: and Miss Carteret;" "our cousins, the Dalrymples," sounded in her ears
all day long.
Sir Walter had once been in company with the late viscount,
but had never seen any of the rest of the family; and the difficulties
of the case arose from there having been a suspension of all intercourse
by letters of ceremony, ever since the death of that said late viscount,
when, in consequence of a dangerous illness of Sir Walter's
at the same time, there had been an unlucky omission at Kellynch.
No letter of condolence had been sent to Ireland. The neglect
had been visited on the head of the sinner; for when poor Lady Elliot
died herself, no letter of condolence was received at Kellynch,
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: intention of telling her so.
That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far. And now,
this crisp September morning, Anne and Diana were tripping blithely
down the Birch Path, two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.
"I guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today," said Diana.
"He's been visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer
and he only came home Saturday night. He's AW'FLY handsome, Anne.
And he teases the girls something terrible. He just torments our
lives out."
Diana's voice indicated that she rather liked having her life
tormented out than not.
Anne of Green Gables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: united and disunited them by perpetual warfare, the name Marana served
to express in its general sense, a prostitute. In those days women of
that sort had a certain rank in the world of which nothing in our day
can give an idea. Ninon de l'Enclos and Marian Delorme have alone
played, in France, the role of the Imperias, Catalinas, and Maranas
who, in preceding centuries, gathered around them the cassock, gown,
and sword. An Imperia built I forget which church in Rome in a frenzy
of repentance, as Rhodope built, in earlier times, a pyramid in Egypt.
The name Marana, inflicted at first as a disgrace upon the singular
family with which we are now concerned, had ended by becoming its
veritable name and by ennobling its vice by incontestable antiquity.
|
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 What is Man? by Mark Twain: size. We do not notice it at first. We get the effect, it goes
straight home to us, but we do not know why. It is when the
right words are conspicuous that they thunder:
The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome!
When I got back from Howells old to Howells young I find him
arranging and clustering English words well, but not any better
than now. He is not more felicitous in concreting abstractions
now than he was in translating, then, the visions of the eyes of
flesh into words that reproduced their forms and colors:
In Venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. It
is at once shoveled into the canals by hundreds of half-naked
What is Man? |
