| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: hovered inquisitively behind her. Mrs. Hochmuller, leading the way
into the house, conducted the Bunner sisters the way to her
bedroom. Here they were invited to spread out on a mountainous
white featherbed the cashmere mantles under which the solemnity of
the occasion had compelled them to swelter, and when they had given
their black silks the necessary twitch of readjustment, and Evelina
had fluffed out her hair before a looking-glass framed in pink-
shell work, their hostess led them to a stuffy parlour smelling of
gingerbread. After another ceremonial pause, broken by polite
enquiries and shy ejaculations, they were shown into the kitchen,
where the table was already spread with strange-looking spice-cakes
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: horror of the dead man's shroud. Then the clock struck the
quarter, and he felt the time was come. He chuckled to himself,
and turned the corner; but no sooner had he done so, than, with a
piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his blanched face in
his long, bony hands. Right in front of him was standing a
horrible spectre, motionless as a carven image, and monstrous as a
madman's dream! Its head was bald and burnished; its face round,
and fat, and white; and hideous laughter seemed to have writhed its
features into an eternal grin. From the eyes streamed rays of
scarlet light, the mouth was a wide well of fire, and a hideous
garment, like to his own, swathed with its silent snows the Titan
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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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: "What! can it be STILL Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.
Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at--in order,
perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with
tolerable self-possession:--
"Why not, madame?"
Such are the blunders we all make at twenty-five.
This speech caused a violent commotion in Madame de Listomere's bosom;
but Rastignac did not yet know how to analyze a woman's face by a
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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 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: the intellectual and spiritual granary of this country. All that silence
and absence of goings-on is the stillness of infinite motion--the sleep of
the spinning-top, to borrow the simile of a well-known writer."
"Oh, well, it med be all that, or it med not. As I say,
I didn't see nothing of it the hour or two I was there;
so I went in and had a pot o' beer, and a penny loaf,
and a ha'porth o' cheese, and waited till it was time
to come along home. You've j'ined a college by this time,
I suppose?"
"Ah, no!" said Jude. "I am almost as far off that as ever."
"How so?"
Jude the Obscure |
