| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: Thorpe hailed him, with a peremptory tone, and gave the
brusque order, "Strand!" as he clambered into the hansom.
CHAPTER II
"LOUISA, the long and short of it is this," said Thorpe,
half an hour later: "you never did believe in me,
as a sister should do."
He was seated alone with this sister, in a small, low,
rather dismally-appointed room, half-heartedly lighted
by two flickering gasjets. They sat somewhat apart,
confronting a fireplace, where only the laid materials for
a fire disclosed themselves in the cold grate. Above the
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: regaled in the credit of being foremost to welcome her,
and in the importance of leading her in to the others,
and recommending her to their kindness.
Fanny Price was at this time just ten years old,
and though there might not be much in her first appearance
to captivate, there was, at least, nothing to disgust
her relations. She was small of her age, with no
glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty;
exceedingly timid and shy, and shrinking from notice;
but her air, though awkward, was not vulgar, her voice
was sweet, and when she spoke her countenance was pretty.
Mansfield Park |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Minotaur or the king! Take them away, guards; and let this
free-spoken youth be the Minotaur's first morsel."
Near the king's throne (though I had no time to tell you so
before) stood his daughter Ariadne. She was a beautiful and
tender-hearted maiden, and looked at these poor doomed captives
with very different feelings from those of the iron-breasted
King Minos. She really wept indeed, at the idea of how much
human happiness would be needlessly thrown away, by giving so
many young people, in the first bloom and rose blossom of their
lives, to be eaten up by a creature who, no doubt, would have
preferred a fat ox, or even a large pig, to the plumpest of
Tanglewood Tales |
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 Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: cracking open perhaps a thousand before he could find one pearl.
"Oh, yess," said be, "and it iss not an easy life, and I am not
saying that it will be so warm and dry ass liffing in a rich house.
But it iss the life that I am fit for, and I hef my own time and my
thoughts to mysel', and that is a ferry goot thing; and then, sir,
I haf found the Pearl of Great Price, and I think upon that day and
night."
Under the black, shattered peaks of Ben Laoghal, where I saw an
eagle poising day after day as if some invisible centripetal force
bound him forever to that small circle of air, there was a loch
with plenty of brown trout and a few salmo ferox; and down at
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