| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: stare. He looked rather like a huge, boiled crayfish at the moment; or
so she thought.
'Connie and I will discuss it,' he said.
'I've already discussed it with her,' said Hilda.
Clifford had been long enough in the hands of nurses; he hated them,
because they left him no real privacy. And a manservant!...he couldn't
stand a man hanging round him. Almost better any woman. But why not
Connie?
The two sisters drove off in the morning, Connie looking rather like an
Easter lamb, rather small beside Hilda, who held the wheel. Sir Malcolm
was away, but the Kensington house was open.
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: each other like two pedlers of coconuts. You understand, my girl, that
if he follows me, he will get the secret of the hiding-place. The king
alone can watch my wanderings at night. I don't feel sure that his
conscience, near as he is to death, can resist thirteen hundred
thousand crowns. We MUST be beforehand with him; we must find the
hidden treasure and send it to Ghent, and you alone--"
Cornelius stopped suddenly, and seemed to be weighing the heart of the
sovereign who had had thoughts of parricide at twenty-two years of
age. When his judgment of Louis XI. was concluded, he rose abruptly
like a man in haste to escape a pressing danger. At this instant, his
sister, too feeble or too strong for such a crisis, fell stark; she
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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 Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: are stealing gravel from the road for your driveway," sneered the
third man. "People like you are what's wrong with this country."
At this point the homeowner put his shovel away and sat down
with his pipe to contemplate these occurrences. Pretty soon a
neighbor from further down the street drove by and saw the man
sitting down enjoying his pipe. "If you weren't so lazy, you'd
shovel some of that gravel off your driveway and back onto the road
where it belongs," the driver sneered as he drove away, spinning his
tires and scattering gravel in every direction.
A Good Horse and a Better
A man once came upon a lad about midday skipping stones across
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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 The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: Mowgli sat with his head on his knees, careless of anything
else, while the remnant of the flying dholes were being
overtaken and run down by the merciless lahinis. Little by
little the cries died away, and the wolves returned limping,
as their wounds stiffened, to take stock of the losses.
Fifteen of the Pack, as well as half a dozen lahinis, lay dead
by the river, and of the others not one was unmarked. And Mowgli
sat through it all till the cold daybreak, when Phao's wet,
red muzzle was dropped in his hand, and Mowgli drew back to show
the gaunt body of Akela.
"Good hunting!" said Phao, as though Akela were still alive,
The Second Jungle Book |
