| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: She heard me thus; and though divinely brought,
Yet innocence, and virgin modesty,
Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth,
That would be wooed, and not unsought be won,
Not obvious, not obtrusive, but, retired,
The more desirable; or, to say all,
Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought,
Wrought in her so, that, seeing me, she turned:
I followed her; she what was honour knew,
And with obsequious majesty approved
My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: him. Agathe did not treat the two children alike; when she went to
fetch them from school, the thought in her mind as to Joseph always
was, "What sort of state shall I find him in?" These trifles drove her
heart into the gulf of maternal preference.
No one among the very ordinary persons who made the society of the two
widows--neither old Du Bruel nor old Claparon, nor Desroches the
father, nor even the Abbe Loraux, Agathe's confessor--noticed Joseph's
faculty for observation. Absorbed in the line of his own tastes, the
future colorist paid no attention to anything that concerned himself.
During his childhood this disposition was so like torpor that his
father grew uneasy about him. The remarkable size of the head and the
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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 The Europeans by Henry James: "My sister is the Baroness Munster," said Felix.
On hearing that his sister was a Baroness, Gertrude got up and
walked about slowly, in front of him. She was silent a moment.
She was thinking of it. "Why did n't she come, too?" she asked.
"She did come; she is in Boston, at the hotel."
"We will go and see her," said Gertrude, looking at him.
"She begs you will not!" the young man replied.
"She sends you her love; she sent me to announce her.
She will come and pay her respects to your father."
Gertrude felt herself trembling again. A Baroness Munster,
who sent a brilliant young man to "announce" her; who was coming,
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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 Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: Michael Fenger worked, relentlessly, coldly, indomitably,
using all the material at hand as a means to an end, with
never a thought of the material itself, as a
builder reaches for a brick, or stone, and fits it into
place, smoothly, almost without actually seeing the brick
itself, except as something which will help to make a
finished wall. She rarely prowled the city now. She told
herself she was too tired at night, and on Sundays and
holidays, and I suppose she was. Indeed, she no longer saw
things with her former vision. It was as though her soul
had shriveled in direct proportion to her salary's
Fanny Herself |
