| 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: hostile intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of a bluster
roars behind the fire-board. A door has slammed above stairs.
A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by
an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived, before-hand, what
wonderful wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, and
how haunted with the strangest noises, which immediately begin
to sing, and sigh, and sob, and shriek,--and to smite with
sledge-hammers, airy but ponderous, in some distant chamber,
--and to tread along the entries as with stately footsteps,
and rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks miraculously
stiff,--whenever the gale catches the house with a window open,
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: in my judgment. The difference in size warrants the conclusion
that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps,
though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged
in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the
experiment to determine the matter. I still think it is a fish,
but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have
it to try. I do not understand this. The coming of the creature
seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable
about experiments. She thinks more of it than she does of any of
the other animals, but is not able to explain why. Her mind is
disordered--everything shows it. Sometimes she carries the fish
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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 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: Annie and Paul and Arthur loved the winter evenings,
when it was not wet. They stayed indoors till the colliers
were all gone home, till it was thick dark, and the street would
be deserted. Then they tied their scarves round their necks,
for they scorned overcoats, as all the colliers' children did,
and went out. The entry was very dark, and at the end the whole
great night opened out, in a hollow, with a little tangle of lights
below where Minton pit lay, and another far away opposite for Selby.
The farthest tiny lights seemed to stretch out the darkness for ever.
The children looked anxiously down the road at the one lamp-post,
which stood at the end of the field path. If the little,
Sons and Lovers |
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 Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: her. But you will never see her do that. For, if she had, she
knew quite well Tom would have fought, and kicked, and bit, and
said bad words, and turned again that moment into a naughty little
heathen chimney-sweep, with his hand, like Ishmael's of old,
against every man, and every man's hand against him.
Did she question him, hurry him, frighten him, threaten him, to
make him confess? Not a bit. You may see her, as I said, at her
work often enough if you know where to look for her: but you will
never see her do that. For, if she had, she would have tempted him
to tell lies in his fright; and that would have been worse for him,
if possible, than even becoming a heathen chimney-sweep again.
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