| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey stockings,
and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she
looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age;
erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working
automatically.
CHAPTER II
Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart. Her
father, who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding.
Then her mother died and her sisters went their different ways; a
farmer took her in, and while she was quite small, let her keep cows
A Simple Soul |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: and away the richest I ever listened to."
"And what's it all about?"
"My dear fellow, don't ask me! About everything!" I pursued,
reminding myself of poor Adelaide. "About his ideas of things," I
then more charitably added. "You must have heard him to know what
I mean--it's unlike anything that ever WAS heard." I coloured, I
admit, I overcharged a little, for such a picture was an
anticipation of Saltram's later development and still more of my
fuller acquaintance with him. However, I really expressed, a
little lyrically perhaps, my actual imagination of him when I
proceeded to declare that, in a cloud of tradition, of legend, he
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: weather, and she had said, thinking partly to cover their shyness,
partly to encourage them to be off (for her sympathies were with Paul),
"There isn't a cloud anywhere within miles," at which she could feel
little Charles Tansley, who had followed them out, snigger. But she
did it on purpose. Whether Nancy was there or not, she could not be
certain, looking from one to the other in her mind's eye.
She read on: "Ah, wife," said the man, "why should we be King? I do
not want to be King." "Well," said the wife, "if you won't be King, I
will; go to the Flounder, for I will be King."
"Come in or go out, Cam," she said, knowing that Cam was attracted only
by the word "Flounder" and that in a moment she would fidget and fight
To the Lighthouse |
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 Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some
gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller.
The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with
terror. What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late;
and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin,
if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind?
Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in
stammering accents, " Who are you?" He received no reply. He
repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there
was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible
Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
