| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: this, which needs the consideration of the house! This is first in
importance, and demands your immediate--"
"Order! order!" came from all parts of the house.
"I am in order--the right is always in order!" she exclaimed,
getting more and more excited. "We women are not going to be
contented with the mere show of our rights on this floor; we demand
the substance--"
And so she was going on, when there arose the most fearful tumult.
The upshot of it was, that the speaker ordered the sergeant-at-arms
to remove Mrs. Whiston; one of the members, more considerate,
walked across the floor to her, and tried to explain in what manner
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: destiny in being rolled away upon a new planet into the infinitude
of space. All difference of race, all distinction of nationality,
must be merged into the one thought that, few as they were,
they were the sole surviving representatives of a world which it
seemed exceedingly improbable that they would ever see again;
and common sense dictated that they were bound to direct all
their energies to insure that their asteroid should at least
have a united and sympathizing population.
It was on the 25th of February that the yacht left the little
creek in which she had taken refuge, and setting off at full
steam eastwards, she continued her way along the northern shore.
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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 Glasses by Henry James: more with my interpretation of it.
"There IS something, there IS something--possibly something very
grave, certainly something that requires she should make use of
artificial aids. She won't admit it publicly, because with her
idolatry of her beauty, the feeling she is all made up of, she sees
in such aids nothing but the humiliation and the disfigurement.
She has used them in secret, but that is evidently not enough, for
the affection she suffers from, apparently some definite menace,
has lately grown much worse. She looked straight at me in the
shop, which was violently lighted, without seeing it was I. At the
same distance, at Folkestone, where as you know I first met her,
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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 Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: would go and dig a hole at a distance from them, and then with long
poles, and hooks at the end of them, drag the bodies into these pits,
and then throw the earth in from as far as they could cast it, to cover
them, taking notice how the wind blew, and so coming on that side
which the seamen call to windward, that the scent of the bodies might
blow from them; and thus great numbers went out of the world who
were never known, or any account of them taken, as well within the
bills of mortality as without.
This, indeed, I had in the main only from the relation of others, for I
seldom walked into the fields, except towards Bethnal Green and
Hackney, or as hereafter. But when I did walk, I always saw a great
A Journal of the Plague Year |
