| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: fiction, presented in picturesque speech, real only by the
response of her emotion.
Lingard paused. In the cessation of the impassioned murmur she
began to reflect. And at first it was only an oppressive notion
of there being some significance that really mattered in this
man's story. That mattered to her. For the first time the shadow
of danger and death crossed her mind. Was that the significance?
Suddenly, in a flash of acute discernment, she saw herself
involved helplessly in that story, as one is involved in a
natural cataclysm.
He was speaking again. He had not been silent more than a minute.
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: Tirechair. "Is not it his business to tell us how we should deal with
these extraordinary persons?"
"Ay, truly extraordinary," cried Jacqueline. "To think of their
cunning; coming here under the very shadow of Notre-Dame! Still," she
went on, "or ever I ask the Dean, why not warn that fair and noble
lady of the risk she runs?"
As she spoke, Jacqueline went into the house with her husband, who had
not missed a mouthful. Tirechair, as a man grown old in the tricks of
his trade, affected to believe that the strange lady was in fact a
work-girl; still, this assumed indifference could not altogether cloak
the timidity of a courtier who respects a royal incognity. At this
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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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: "Amyas, Mr. Oxenham has not come home; and from the day he sailed,
no word has been heard of him and all his crew."
"Oh, Sir Richard! and you kept me from sailing with him! Had I
known this before I went into church, I had had one mercy more to
thank God for."
"Thank Him all the more in thy life, my child!" whispered his
mother.
"And no news of him whatsoever?"
"None; but that the year after he sailed, a ship belonging to
Andrew Barker, of Bristol, took out of a Spanish caravel, somewhere
off the Honduras, his two brass guns; but whence they came the
|
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 Statesman by Plato: YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: The provision of food and of all other things which mingle their
particles with the particles of the human body, and minister to the body,
will form a seventh class, which may be called by the general term of
nourishment, unless you have any better name to offer. This, however,
appertains rather to the husbandman, huntsman, trainer, doctor, cook, and
is not to be assigned to the Statesman's art.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.
STRANGER: These seven classes include nearly every description of
property, with the exception of tame animals. Consider;--there was the
original material, which ought to have been placed first; next come
Statesman |
