| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: attachment was to Miss Ashton personally; that he desired neither
wealth nor aggrandisement from her father's means and influence;
and that nothing should prevent his keeping his engagement,
excepting her own express desire that it should be relinquished;
and he requested as a favour that the matter might be no more
mentioned betwixt them at present, assuring the Marquis of A----
that he should be his confidant or its interruption.
The Marquis soon had more agreeable, as well as more
interesting, subjects on which to converse. A foot-post, who had
followed him from Edinburgh to Ravenswood Castle, and had traced
his steps to the Tod's Hole, brought him a packet laden with good
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: crafty ignorance.
And as they watched, their over-wrought nerves sud-
denly shuddered to the grewsome clanking of a chain
from the dark interior of the hovel.
The youth, holding tight to Bridge's sleeve, strove to
pull him away.
"Let's go back," he whispered in a voice that trembled
so that he could scarce control it.
"Yes, please," urged the girl. "Here is another path
leading toward the north. We must be close to a road.
Let's get away from here."
The Oakdale Affair |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: piece of bush veldt, with great ranges of mountains running through it,
and round granite koppies starting up here and there, looking out like
sentinels over the rolling waste of bush. But it is very hot--hot as a
stew-pan--and when I was there that March, which, of course, is autumn
in this part of Africa, the whole place reeked of fever. Every morning,
as I trekked along down by the Oliphant River, I used to creep from the
waggon at dawn and look out. But there was no river to be seen--only a
long line of billows of what looked like the finest cotton wool tossed
up lightly with a pitchfork. It was the fever mist. Out from among the
scrub, too, came little spirals of vapour, as though there were hundreds
of tiny fires alight in it--reek rising from thousands of tons of
Long Odds |
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 Death of the Lion by Henry James: commit herself extraordinarily little in a great many languages,
and is entertained and conversed with in detachments and relays,
like an institution which goes on from generation to generation or
a big building contracted for under a forfeit. She can't have a
personal taste any more than, when her husband succeeds, she can
have a personal crown, and her opinion on any matter is rusty and
heavy and plain - made, in the night of ages, to last and be
transmitted. I feel as if I ought to 'tip' some custode for my
glimpse of it. She has been told everything in the world and has
never perceived anything, and the echoes of her education respond
awfully to the rash footfall - I mean the casual remark - in the
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