| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: alone. He was startled to see a letter for him from Jersey
in a writing he knew too well, and had expected least to
behold again. He took it up in his hands and looked at it
as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past enactments; and
then he read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture.
The writer said that she at length perceived how impossible
it would be for any further communications to proceed
between them now that his re-marriage had taken place. That
such reunion had been the only straightforward course open
to him she was bound to admit.
"On calm reflection, therefore," she went on, "I quite
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: horrors, one can imagine them growing up and asking to be taken to the
Royal Academy."
And she spoke as though a visit to the Royal Academy was certain immediate
death to any one...
"Well, I don't know," said William slowly. "When I was their age I used to
go to bed hugging an old towel with a knot in it."
The new Isabel looked at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips apart.
"Dear William! I'm sure you did!" She laughed in the new way.
Sweets it would have to be, however, thought William gloomily, fishing in
his pocket for change for the taxi-man. And he saw the kiddies handing the
boxes round--they were awfully generous little chaps--while Isabel's
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: And now I found myself in great distress; what little I had
in the world was all in money, except as before, a little plate,
some linen, and my clothes; as for my household stuff, I had
little or none, for I had lived always in lodgings; but I had not
one friend in the world with whom to trust that little I had, or
to direct me how to dispose of it, and this perplexed me night
and day. I thought of the bank, and of the other companies in
London, but I had no friend to commit the management of it
to, and keep and carry about with me bank bills, tallies, orders,
and such things, I looked upon at as unsafe; that if they were
lost, my money was lost, and then I was undone; and, on the
Moll Flanders |
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 Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: and night closed upon him, and the waters, and the meshes of the
net; and he wallowed there like a fish.
"A body would think there was something in this," said the
missionary. "But if these tales are true, I wonder what about my
tales!"
Now the flaming of Akaanga's torch drew near in the night; and the
misshapen hands groped in the meshes of the net; and they took the
missionary between the finger and the thumb, and bore him dripping
in the night and silence to the place of the ovens of Miru. And
there was Miru, ruddy in the glow of the ovens; and there sat her
four daughters, and made the kava of the dead; and there sat the
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