| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: his fanciful picture of renewal.
"Charity--Charity--say you'll do it," she heard him
urge, all his lost years and wasted passion in his
voice.
"Oh, what's the use of all this? When I leave here it
won't be with you."
She moved toward the door as she spoke, and he stood up
and placed himself between her and the threshold. He
seemed suddenly tall and strong, as though the
extremity of his humiliation had given him new vigour.
"That's all, is it? It's not much." He leaned against
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Egmont. Not all; I was thinking at the time of something else. She is a
woman, good Orange, and all women expect that every one shall submit
passively to their gentle yoke; that every Hercules shall lay aside his lion's
skin, assume the distaff, and swell their train; and, because they are
themselves peaceably inclined, imagine forsooth, that the ferment which
seizes a nation, the storm which powerful rivals excite against one
another, may be allayed by one soothing word, and the most discordant
elements be brought to unite in tranquil harmony at their feet. 'Tis thus
with her; and since she cannot accomplish her object, why she has no
resource left but to lose her temper, to menace us with direful prospects
for the future, and to threaten to take her departure.
Egmont |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: over the whole "The Union of Luxury and Learning."
Surely here, thought I, if anywhere, the old world literature
will be valued and nursed with gracious care; so with a pleasing
sense of the general congruity of all around me, I enquired
for the rooms of the librarian. Nobody seemed to be quite sure
of his name, or upon whom the bibliographical mantle had descended.
His post, it seemed, was honorary and a sinecure, being imposed,
as a rule, upon the youngest "Fellow." No one cared
for the appointment, and as a matter of course the keys
of office had but distant acquaintance with the lock.
At last I was rewarded with success, and politely, but mutely,
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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 The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: floor through the vestibule and the hall. Ivan Ivanitch was
sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room; he was drinking tea
again and muttering something. My wife was standing opposite to
him and holding on to the back of a chair. There was a gentle,
sweet, and docile expression on her face, such as one sees on the
faces of people listening to crazy saints or holy men when a
peculiar hidden significance is imagined in their vague words and
mutterings. There was something morbid, something of a nun's
exaltation, in my wife's expression and attitude; and her
low-pitched, half-dark rooms with their old-fashioned furniture,
with her birds asleep in their cages, and with a smell of
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