| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: fondest o' you. She wants to go o' your lap, I'll be bound. Go,
then: take her, Master Marner; you can put the things on, and then
you can say as you've done for her from the first of her coming to
you."
Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to
himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. Thought and
feeling were so confused within him, that if he had tried to give
them utterance, he could only have said that the child was come
instead of the gold--that the gold had turned into the child. He
took the garments from Dolly, and put them on under her teaching;
interrupted, of course, by Baby's gymnastics.
Silas Marner |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: reference he gave me through my Jamaica banker. And that done, I took
him shopping for underwear and such like equipments of a gentleman
at large. Presently came the verified reference. His astonishing
story was true. I will not amplify our subsequent proceedings.
He started for England in three days' time.
"I do not know how I can possibly thank you enough," began the letter
he wrote me from England, "for all your kindness to a total stranger,"
and proceeded for some time in a similar strain. "Had it not been
for your generous assistance, I could certainly never have returned
in time for the resumption of my scholastic duties, and my few
minutes of reckless folly would, perhaps, have proved my ruin.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: The rhythmic saw, and then the hammer again,--
Playing with delicate strokes that sombre scale . . .
And the fountain dwindles, the sunlight seems to pale.
Time is a dream, he thinks, a destroying dream;
It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas;
It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.
Where was the woman he loved? Where was his youth?
Where was the dream that burned his brain like fire?
Even a dream grows grey at last and falls.
He opened his book once more, beside the window,
And read the printed words upon that page.
|
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 Mountains by Stewart Edward White: have not known until you have traveled the high
mountains. Summer lives in the valley; that you
know. Then a little higher you are in the spring-
time, even in August. Melting patches of snow
linger under the heavy firs; the earth is soggy with
half-absorbed snow-water, trickling with exotic little
rills that do not belong; grasses of the year before
float like drowned hair in pellucid pools with an air
of permanence, except for the one fact; fresh green
things are sprouting bravely; through bare branches
trickles a shower of bursting buds, larger at the top,
|
