| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: SECOND CITIZEN
They be very long a-coming,
FIRST CITIZEN
I warrant they will come soon enough for the prisoner.
TIPSTAFF
Silence in the Court!
FIRST CITIZEN
Thou dost break silence in bidding us keep it, Master Tipstaff.
[Enter the LORD JUSTICE and the other Judges.]
SECOND CITIZEN
Who is he in scarlet? Is he the headsman?
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: Beatrice of a day, is a 'perfect lady.'
"It is not very easy for a foreigner, my dear Count, to recognize the
differences by which the observer /emeritus/ distinguishes them--women
are such consummate actresses; but they are glaring in the eyes of
Parisians: hooks ill fastened, strings showing loops of rusty-white
tape through a gaping slit in the back, rubbed shoe-leather, ironed
bonnet-strings, an over-full skirt, an over-tight waist. You will see
a certain effort in the intentional droop of the eyelid. There is
something conventional in the attitude.
"As to the /bourgeoise/, the citizen womankind, she cannot possibly be
mistaken for the spell cast over you by the Unknown. She is bustling,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: after it disappeared the spindling chimneys and their smoke, which were
along the bank above the town and bridge, leaving us to progress through
the solitude of marsh and wood and shore. The green levels of stiff salt
grass closed in upon the breadth of water, and we wound among them,
looking across their silence to the deeper silence of the woods that
bordered them, the brooding woods, the pines and the liveoaks, misty with
the motionless hanging moss, and misty also in that Southern air that
deepened when it came among their trunks to a caressing, mysterious,
purple veil. Every line of this landscape, the straight forest top, the
feathery breaks in it of taller trees, the curving marsh, every line and
every hue and every sound inscrutably spoke sadness. I heard a
|
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 Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: soldiery at some stated period?"
"My lord," said Dalgetty, "I take it on my conscience, that at no
period, and by no possible process, could one creutzer of them
ever be recovered. I myself never saw twenty dollars of my own
all the time I served the invincible Gustavus, unless it was from
the chance of a storm or victory, or the fetching in some town or
doorp, when a cavalier of fortune, who knows the usage of wars,
seldom faileth to make some small profit."
"I begin rather to wonder, sir," said Lord Menteith, "that you
should have continued so long in the Swedish service, than that
you should have ultimately withdrawn from it."
|
