| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: rascal had enough money in his pocket to enable him to keep away
still longer), everything might blow over.
CHAPTER IX
Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but
lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his younger brothers had
finished their meal and gone out; awaiting his father, who always
took a walk with his managing-man before breakfast. Every one
breakfasted at a different hour in the Red House, and the Squire was
always the latest, giving a long chance to a rather feeble morning
appetite before he tried it. The table had been spread with
substantial eatables nearly two hours before he presented himself--
Silas Marner |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger,
a military brother, whom he had lost two years before.
These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man
in his position--a lone man without the right sort of
experience or a grain of patience--very heavily on his hands.
It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless,
a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks
and had done all he could; had in particular sent them
down to his other house, the proper place for them being
of course the country, and kept them there, from the first,
with the best people he could find to look after them,
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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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: so long as he was sure. There was something, it seemed to him,
that the wrong word would bring down on his head, something that
would so at least ease off his tension. But he wanted not to speak
the wrong word; that would make everything ugly. He wanted the
knowledge he lacked to drop on him, if drop it could, by its own
august weight. If she was to forsake him it was surely for her to
take leave. This was why he didn't directly ask her again what she
knew; but it was also why, approaching the matter from another
side, he said to her in the course of his visit: "What do you
regard as the very worst that at this time of day CAN happen to
me?"
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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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: some authors have been. Here you find Dr. Sib's "Bowels opened
in Divers Sermons," 1650, cheek by jowl with the discourse attributed
falsely to Huntington, the Calvinist, "Die and be damned,"
with many others too coarse to be quoted. The odd titles adopted
for his poems by Taylor, the water-poet, enliven several pages,
and make one's mouth water for the books themselves. A third
volume includes only such titles as have the printer's device.
If you shut your eyes to the injury done by such collectors, you may,
to a certain extent, enjoy the collection, for there is great beauty
in some titles; but such a pursuit is neither useful nor meritorious.
By and by the end comes, and then dispersion follows collection,
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