| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: You are NOT going to that ball!"
Ann Veronica tried a less genial, more dignified note.
"I thought we had discussed that, father."
"You are not going to that ball! You are not going out of this
house in that get-up!"
Ann Veronica tried yet more earnestly to treat him, as she would
treat any man, with an insistence upon her due of masculine
respect. "You see," she said, very gently, "I AM going. I am
sorry to seem to disobey you, but I am. I wish"--she found she
had embarked on a bad sentence--"I wish we needn't have
quarrelled."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Macb. We should haue else desir'd your good aduice
(Which still hath been both graue, and prosperous)
In this dayes Councell: but wee'le take to morrow.
Is't farre you ride?
Ban. As farre, my Lord, as will fill vp the time
'Twixt this, and Supper. Goe not my Horse the better,
I must become a borrower of the Night,
For a darke houre, or twaine
Macb. Faile not our Feast
Ban. My Lord, I will not
Macb. We heare our bloody Cozens are bestow'd
Macbeth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: half-regretfully, a sense of his deep privation stealing upon
him.
"What!" cried Polly, incredulously.
"Lordy no, chile; he ain't nebber seed none ob dem tings," Mandy
interrupted, as she tried to arrange a few short-stemmed posies
in a variegated bouquet.
"Well, what do you think of that!" Polly gasped. "You're the
first rube I ever saw that hadn't." She was looking at him as
though he were a curiosity.
"So I'm a rube!" Douglas shook his head with a sad, little smile
and good-naturedly agreed that he had sometimes feared as much.
|
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 A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that
there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them
into practice.
But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with
offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly
despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal,
which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real,
of no expence and little trouble, full in our own power, and
whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this
kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of
A Modest Proposal |
