| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: I speak so roughly. Think nothing of it, dearest child! By and by,
I shall be kind, and only kind!"
"My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?" asked Phoebe,
with a sunny and tearful sympathy. "What is it that moves you so?"
"Hush! hush! He is coming!" whispered Hepzibah, hastily wiping
her eyes. "Let him see you first, Phoebe; for you are young and rosy,
and cannot help letting a smile break out whether or no. He always
liked bright faces! And mine is old now, and the tears are hardly dry
on it. He never could abide tears. There; draw the curtain a little,
so that the shadow may fall across his side of the table! But let there
be a good deal of sunshine, too; for he never was fond of gloom, as some
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: him, and that Genovese had been commanded to make amends to the
public.
The Duchess owed this visit from the Austrian General to the fact that
a French physician had come to Venice whom the General wished to
introduce to her. The Prince, seeing Vendramin wandering about the
/parterre/, went out for a few minutes of confidential talk with his
friend, whom he had not seen for three months; and as they walked
round the gangway which divides the seats in the pit from the lowest
tier of boxes, he had an opportunity of observing Massimilla's
reception of the foreigner.
"Who is that Frenchman?" asked the Prince.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Rig Veda: Whom mortal priests, men, with their strong endeavour, supplied
with
dainty viands, have created.
4 Good to mankind, the yearning Purifier hath among men been
placed as
Priest choice-worthy.
May Agni be our Friend, Lord of the Household, protector of
the riches
in the dwelling.
5 As such we Gotamas with hymns extol thee, O Agni, as the
guardian
The Rig Veda |
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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: rising from his place to show us where they stood. By these, I
gathered the Prince was a gracious, spirited boy, like the son of
a race of polite kings, but not so wise as Solomon. I gathered,
too, that while he was in the Cage, he was often drunk; so the
fault that has since, by all accounts, made such a wreck of him,
had even then begun to show itself.
We were no sooner done eating than Cluny brought out an old,
thumbed, greasy pack of cards, such as you may find in a mean
inn; and his eyes brightened in his face as he proposed that we
should fall to playing.
Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew
Kidnapped |
