| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: I'm not very sure I ought to want you to. It's dreadful to bring a
person back at any time to what he was ten years before. If you've
lived away from it," she smiled, "so much the better."
"Ah if YOU haven't why should I?" he asked.
"Lived away, you mean, from what I myself was?"
"From what I was. I was of course an ass," Marcher went on; "but I
would rather know from you just the sort of ass I was than--from
the moment you have something in your mind--not know anything."
Still, however, she hesitated. "But if you've completely ceased to
be that sort--?"
"Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: family joined him; there were moments when I feared for my life;
and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward
Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn
in the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily
eliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bank
in the name of Edward Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own
hand backward, I had supplied my double with a signature, I
thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.
Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been
out for one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and
woke the next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: asparagus, kidney beans, cucumbers, rhubarb, apples,
pears, figs, peaches, apricots, grapes, olives, gooseberries,
currants, hops, gorse for fences, and English oaks; also many
kinds of flowers. Around the farm-yard there were stables,
a thrashing-barn with its winnowing machine, a blacksmith's
forge, and on the ground ploughshares and other tools: in
the middle was that happy mixture of pigs and poultry, lying
comfortably together, as in every English farm-yard. At the
distance of a few hundred yards, where the water of a little
rill had been dammed up into a pool, there was a large and
substantial water-mill.
The Voyage of the Beagle |
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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: dreamed of daring - he too tasted of our common frailty. "O, Iago,
the pity of it!" The least tender should be moved to tears; the
most incredulous to prayer. And all that you could do was to pen
your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage!
Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you have drawn of
your own heart? I will try yet once again to make it clearer. You
had a father: suppose this tale were about him, and some informant
brought it to you, proof in hand: I am not making too high an
estimate of your emotional nature when I suppose you would regret
the circumstance? that you would feel the tale of frailty the more
keenly since it shamed the author of your days? and that the last
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