| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: first time thus invaded their domains. Pencroft recognized the skua and
other gulls among them, the voracious little sea-mew, which in great
numbers nestled in the crevices of the granite. A shot fired among this
swarm would have killed a great number, but to fire a shot a gun was
needed, and neither Pencroft nor Herbert had one; besides this, gulls and
sea-mews are scarcely eatable, and even their eggs have a detestable taste.
However, Herbert, who had gone forward a little more to the left, soon came
upon rocks covered with sea-weed, which, some hours later, would be hidden
by the high tide. On these rocks, in the midst of slippery wrack, abounded
bivalve shell-fish, not to be despised by starving people. Herbert called
Pencroft, who ran up hastily.
The Mysterious Island |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: unpleasant, even though he had never known her not affable. She had
forms of affability that were in a high degree assertive; nothing
for instance had ever been more striking than that she was affable
to Jim.
What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high
clear forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason,
always thought of as a "brow"; the long reach of her eyes--it came
out at this juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly
enough, also of that of Waymarsh's; and the unusual gloss of her
dark hair, dressed and hatted, after her mother's refined example,
with such an avoidance of extremes that it was always spoken of at
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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 Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: felt for Giguet, which a few words on their antecedents will explain.
Antonin Goulard, the son of a former huntsman to the house of Simeuse,
enriched by the purchase of the confiscated property of /emigres/ was,
like Simon Giguet, a son of Arcis. Old Goulard, his father, left the
abbey of Valpreux (corruption of Val-des-Preux) to live in Arcis after
the death of his wife, and he sent his son to the imperial lyceum,
where Colonel Giguet had already placed his son Simon. The two
schoolmates subsequently went through their legal studies in Paris
together, and their intimacy was continued in the amusements of youth.
They promised to help each other to success in life whenever they
entered upon their different careers. But fate willed that they should
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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 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: awake and all fiends would come from below.
They crouched until the ghost-mists of dawn appeared at the
window, drawing close to the panes, and looking in at the
prostrate, heaving body of the mother.
Chapter IV
The babe, Tommie, died. He went away in a white,
insignificant coffin, his small waxen hand clutching a flower that
the girl, Maggie, had stolen from an Italian.
She and Jimmie lived.
The inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at an
early age. He became a young man of leather. He lived some red
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
