| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: with his life and with the cattle that he had already taken by way of a
fine, and leave us and the house unmolested.
Now, when Leblanc understood the nature of this offer he went perfectly
mad with mingled fear and rage, and began to shout and swear in French.
"Be silent," I said; "we do not mean to surrender you, although you have
brought all this trouble on us. Your chance of life is as good as ours.
Are you not ashamed to act so before these black people?"
When at last he grew more or less quiet I called to the messenger that
we white folk were not in the habit of abandoning each other, and that
we would live or die together. Still, I bade him tell Quabie that if we
did die, the vengeance taken on him and all his people would be to wipe
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: divined society as, once before, she had divined life, and she saw
nothing around her but the immense extent of an irreparable disaster.
She had, moreover, the additional grief of tardily recognizing her
husband's peculiar form of incapacity; he was a man unfitted for any
purpose that required continuity of ideas. He could not understand a
consistent part, such as he ought to play in the world; he perceived
it neither as a whole nor in its gradations, and its gradations were
everything. He was in one of those positions where shrewdness and tact
might have taken the place of strength; when shrewdness and tact
succeed, they are, perhaps, the highest form of strength.
Now Diard, far from arresting the spot of oil on his garments left by
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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 A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: each other as only to allow space for a small wicker chair betwixt
them, rendered the affair still more oppressive to us; - they were
fixed up moreover near the fire; and the projection of the chimney
on one side, and a large beam which cross'd the room on the other,
formed a kind of recess for them that was no way favourable to the
nicety of our sensations: - if anything could have added to it, it
was that the two beds were both of them so very small, as to cut us
off from every idea of the lady and the maid lying together; which
in either of them, could it have been feasible, my lying beside
them, though a thing not to be wish'd, yet there was nothing in it
so terrible which the imagination might not have pass'd over
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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 Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: picked up his hat.
"Won't you wait for her?" asked Edna.
"Not if you think she will not be back till late," adding, as
if suddenly aware of some discourtesy in his speech, "and I should
miss the pleasure of walking home with you." Edna locked the door
and put the key back in its hiding-place.
They went together, picking their way across muddy streets and
sidewalks encumbered with the cheap display of small tradesmen.
Part of the distance they rode in the car, and after disembarking,
passed the Pontellier mansion, which looked broken and half torn
asunder. Robert had never known the house, and looked at it with
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
