| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: a King. He'll be King, too, in the next three turns of the capstan -
King of France, England, and the world! Think o' that!" he
shouts, "and eat your herring."
'I says something about Boney. If he hadn't been fighting
England I shouldn't have lost my 'baccy - should I?
'"Young fellow," says Maingon, "you don't understand."
'We heard cheering. A carriage passed over the bridge with two
in it.
'"That's the man himself," says Maingon. "He'll give 'em
something to cheer for soon." He stands at the salute.
'"Who's t'other in black beside him?" I asks, fairly shaking
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: woman can only like a man when he likes her; and I thought, perhaps, he
liked me a little. Since we have been in town we have asked, but he has
never come to see us. Perhaps people have been saying something to him
about me. You know him, you are always meeting him, couldn't you say or do
anything for me?" She looked up with her lips white and drawn. "I feel
sometimes as if I were going mad! Oh, it is so terrible to be a woman!"
The woman looked down at her. "Now I hear he likes another woman. I don't
know who she is, but they say she is so clever, and writes. Oh, it is so
terrible, I can't bear it."
The woman leaned her elbow against the mantelpiece, and her face against
her hand. She looked down into the fire. Then she turned and looked at
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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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: country he might, it is as likely to be the case--passed by,
and threw a look at the monkey, and went on, without imagining
how nearly his own moral condition was here exemplified. Clifford,
however, was a being of another order. He had taken childish
delight in the music, and smiled, too, at the figures which it
set in motion. But, after looking awhile at the long-tailed imp,
he was so shocked by his horrible ugliness, spiritual as well as
physical, that he actually began to shed tears; a weakness which
men of merely delicate endowments, and destitute of the fiercer,
deeper, and more tragic power of laughter, can hardly avoid,
when the worst and meanest aspect of life happens to be
House of Seven Gables |
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 A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: at a ball, who yawns but does not go home to bed,
simply because his carriage has not come for him.
But now the carriage is here. . . Good-bye! . . .
My whole past life I live again in memory, and,
involuntarily, I ask myself: 'why have I lived --
for what purpose was I born?' . . . A purpose
there must have been, and, surely, mine was an
exalted destiny, because I feel that within my
soul are powers immeasurable. . . But I was
not able to discover that destiny, I allowed myself
to be carried away by the allurements of passions,
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