| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: lower classes, and you think of them as rough men. But let me
show you what is going on among our college students--among the
men our daughters are some day to marry. Let me show you the
women who prey upon them! Perhaps, who knows--I can show you the
very woman who was the cause of all the misery in your own
family!"
And as Monsieur Loches rose from his chair, the doctor came to
him and took him by the hand. "Promise me, sir," he said,
earnestly, "that you will come back and let me teach you more
about these matters. It is a chance that I must not let go--the
first time in my life that I ever got hold of a real live deputy!
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: He pictured with a vivid fancy those fair summer scenes with her.
He again saw her as at their first meeting, timid at speaking, yet
in her eagerness to be explanatory borne forward almost against
her will. How she would wait for him in green places, without
showing any of the ordinary womanly affectations of indifference!
How proud she was to be seen walking with him, bearing legibly in
her eyes the thought that he was the greatest genius in the world!
He formed a resolution; and after that could make pretence of
slumber no longer. Rising and dressing himself, he sat down and
waited for day.
That night Stephen was restless too. Not because of the
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: to those of most gentlemen; though his ambition had been educated
only by the opportunities of a clerk and accountant in the smaller
commercial houses of a seaport. He thought the rural Featherstones
very simple absurd people, and they in their turn regarded his
"bringing up" in a seaport town as an exaggeration of the monstrosity
that their brother Peter, and still more Peter's property, should
have had such belongings.
The garden and gravel approach, as seen from the two windows of the
wainscoted parlor at Stone Court, were never in better trim than now,
when Mr. Rigg Featherstone stood, with his hands behind him,
looking out on these grounds as their master. But it seemed doubtful
Middlemarch |
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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: glimpse of the moon or stars--nor was there any flashing forth of
the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of
agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately
around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly
luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung
about and enshrouded the mansion.
"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I,
shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence,
from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder
you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon--or it may be
that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the
The Fall of the House of Usher |
