| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: I plunged my hands deep in my breeches pocket.
Hunsden triumphed: his eyes--his laugh announced victory.
"What the deuce are you laughing at, Mr. Hunsden?"
"At your exemplary composure. Well, lad, I'll not bore you; I
see how it is: Zoraide has jilted you--married some one richer,
as any sensible woman would have done if she had had the chance."
I made no reply--I let him think so, not feeling inclined to
enter into an explanation of the real state of things, and as
little to forge a false account; but it was not easy to blind
Hunsden; my very silence, instead of convincing him that he had
hit the truth, seemed to render him doubtful about it; he went
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: College was known only to us two. She never told it to anyone,
and I soon forgot it. All due honor, therefore, to the ingenuity
with which you have filled the hiatus, and shown the state of
affairs between us by a discourse on " surplus value," cribbed
from an imperfect report of one of my public lectures, and from
the pages of Karl Marx! If you were an economist I should condemn
you for confusing economic with ethical considerations, and for
your uncertainty as to the function which my father got his start
by performing. But as you are only a novelist, I compliment you
heartily on your clever little pasticcio, adding, however, that
as an account of what actually passed between myself and Hetty,
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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 The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: had begun. The turner, stupefied with amazement, borrowed a horse
from a neighbor, and now was taking his old woman to the hospital
in the hope that, by means of powders and ointments, Pavel
Ivanitch would bring back his old woman's habitual expression.
"I say, Matryona, . . ." the turner muttered, "if Pavel Ivanitch
asks you whether I beat you, say, 'Never!' and I never will beat
you again. I swear it. And did I ever beat you out of spite? I
just beat you without thinking. I am sorry for you. Some men
wouldn't trouble, but here I am taking you. . . . I am doing my
best. And the way it snows, the way it snows! Thy Will be done, O
Lord! God grant we don't get off the road. . . . Does your side
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
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 Juana by Honore de Balzac: event was a secret between herself and God, but assuredly it was in a
moment of repentance and melancholy, this Marana of the nineteenth
century stood with her feet in the slime and her head raised to
heaven. She cursed the blood in her veins, she cursed herself, she
trembled lest she should have a daughter, and she swore, as such women
swear, on the honor and with the will of the galleys--the firmest
will, the most scrupulous honor that there is on earth--she swore,
before an altar, and believing in that altar, to make her daughter a
virtuous creature, a saint, and thus to gain, after that long line of
lost women, criminals in love, an angel in heaven for them all.
The vow once made, the blood of the Maranas spoke; the courtesan
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