| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: trees, and a wilderness of flowers and rose bushes--a garden won from
the rock on the highest terrace of all, with the dark, old balustrade
along its edge. Opposite the gateway, a wooden summer-house stands
against the neighboring wall, the posts are covered with jessamine and
honeysuckle, vines and clematis.
The house itself stands in the middle of this highest garden, above a
vine-covered flight of steps, with an arched doorway beneath that
leads to vast cellars hollowed out in the rock. All about the dwelling
trellised vines and pomegranate-trees (the grenadiers, which give the
name to the little close) are growing out in the open air. The front
of the house consists of two large windows on either side of a very
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: placed it in his pocket-book. After all, there were things that
looked queer. The fellow had certainly evaded that last question
of his.
He made his way, head bent, toward the station.
He had ten minutes to wait, and he wandered to the newsstand. He
made a casual inspection of its display, bought a newspaper and
was turning away, when he stopped and gazed after a man who had
just passed him from an out-bound train.
The reporter looked after him with amused interest. Gregory, too!
The Livingstone chap had certainly started something. But it was
odd, too. How had Gregory traced him? Wasn't there something more
The Breaking Point |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: with it, and he started from his loom to the door. As he opened it
the rain beat in upon him, for it was falling more and more heavily.
There were no footsteps to be tracked on such a night--footsteps?
When had the thief come? During Silas's absence in the daytime the
door had been locked, and there had been no marks of any inroad on
his return by daylight. And in the evening, too, he said to
himself, everything was the same as when he had left it. The sand
and bricks looked as if they had not been moved. _Was_ it a thief
who had taken the bags? or was it a cruel power that no hands could
reach, which had delighted in making him a second time desolate? He
shrank from this vaguer dread, and fixed his mind with struggling
Silas Marner |
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 When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: the right hand was a cup of black marble, in the left a similar
cup of white marble. From each of these cups trickled a thin
stream of sparkling water, which two streams met and mingled at a
distance of about three feet beneath the cups. Then they fell
into a metal basin which, although it must have been quite a foot
thick, was cut right through by their constant impact, and
apparently vanished down some pipe beneath. Out of this metal
basin Tommy, who gambolled into the place ahead of us, began to
drink in a greedy and demonstrative fashion.
"The Life-water?" I said, looking at our guide.
She nodded and asked in her turn:
When the World Shook |
