| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: account of their proposals, and to criticize them before he had heard
them. Nevertheless, he explained his projects as clearly as he could,
and knew that he wished Mr. Denham to think well of them.
"I see," said Ralph, when he had done. "D'you know, Mary," he suddenly
remarked, "I believe I'm in for a cold. Have you any quinine?" The
look which he cast at her frightened her; it expressed mutely, perhaps
without his own consciousness, something deep, wild, and passionate.
She left the room at once. Her heart beat fast at the knowledge of
Ralph's presence; but it beat with pain, and with an extraordinary
fear. She stood listening for a moment to the voices in the next room.
"Of course, I agree with you," she heard Ralph say, in this strange
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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 Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: for the best, but her girl might have naturally hoped to find
somebody of a more suitable age. There had been a steady young
fellow, only son of a butcher in the next street, helping his
father in business, with whom Winnie had been walking out with
obvious gusto. He was dependent on his father, it is true; but the
business was good, and his prospects excellent. He took her girl
to the theatre on several evenings. Then just as she began to
dread to hear of their engagement (for what could she have done
with that big house alone, with Stevie on her hands), that romance
came to an abrupt end, and Winnie went about looking very dull.
But Mr Verloc, turning up providentially to occupy the first-floor
The Secret Agent |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: in one offered no temptation, and as for this courtesy of the
country, this doubling up--!
"Well, they have got ahead of us." This was the Virginian
standing at my elbow.
I assented.
"They have staked out their claims," he added.
In this public sleeping room they had done what one does to
secure a seat in a railroad train. Upon each bed, as notice of
occupancy, lay some article of travel or of dress. As we stood
there, the two Jews came in and opened and arranged their
valises, and folded and refolded their linen dusters. Then a
The Virginian |
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 Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: mysterious individual. Without being precisely a vampire, a ghoul, a
fictitious man, a sort of Faust or Robin des Bois, he partook of the
nature of all these anthropomorphic conceptions, according to those
persons who were addicted to the fantastic. Occasionally some German
would take for realities these ingenious jests of Parisian evil-
speaking. The stranger was simply /an old man/. Some young men, who
were accustomed to decide the future of Europe every morning in a few
fashionable phrases, chose to see in the stranger some great criminal,
the possessor of enormous wealth. Novelists described the old man's
life and gave some really interesting details of the atrocities
committed by him while he was in the service of the Prince of Mysore.
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