| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: kept his boat.
The boat was round and green, and
very like the other lily-leaves. It was
tied to a water-plant in the middle of
the pond.
Mr. Jeremy took a reed pole, and
pushed the boat out into open water.
"I know a good place for minnows,"
said Mr. Jeremy Fisher.
Mr. Jeremy stuck his pole into the
mud and fastened the boat to it.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: ground and the tail end of a great cart. A red-nosed carter in a
blouse and a woollen night-cap leaned against the wheel. An
idle, strolling custom house guard, belted over his blue capote,
had the air of being depressed by exposure to the weather and the
monotony of official existence. The background of grimy houses
found a place in the picture framed by my port-hole, across a
wide stretch of paved quay brown with frozen mud. The colouring
was sombre, and the most conspicuous feature was a little cafe
with curtained windows and a shabby front of white woodwork,
corresponding with the squalor of these poorer quarters bordering
the river. We had been shifted down there from another berth in
A Personal Record |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: North back him up."
"I hope so," said Mr. Chichely, "else he ought not to have married
that nice girl we were all so fond of. Hang it, one has a grudge
against a man who carries off the prettiest girl in the town."
"Ay, by God! and the best too," said Mr. Standish.
"My friend Vincy didn't half like the marriage, I know that,"
said Mr. Chichely. "HE wouldn't do much. How the relations
on the other side may have come down I can't say." There was an
emphatic kind of reticence in Mr. Chichely's manner of speaking.
"Oh, I shouldn't think Lydgate ever looked to practice for a living,"
said Mr. Toller, with a slight touch of sarcasm, and there the subject
Middlemarch |
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 Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: two things were confused in his mind, and the glamour of world
dominion rested wonderfully on the slack and straggling British
Empire of Edward the Seventh--and Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr.
Chamberlain. He did go on for a time honestly entertaining both
these projects in his mind, each at its different level, the greater
impalpable one and the lesser concrete one within it. In some
unimaginable way he could suppose that the one by some miracle of
ennoblement--and neglecting the Frenchman, the Russian, the German,
the American, the Indian, the Chinaman, and, indeed, the greater
part of mankind from the problem--might become the other. . . .
All of which is recorded here, without excess of comment, as it
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