| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: to make of it.'
'Then, sir, I fear you must be very much worse than you should be,
if I, a mere ordinary mortal, am, by your own confession, so vastly
your superior; and since there exists so little sympathy between
us, I think we had better each look out for some more congenial
companion.' And forthwith moving to the window, I began to look
out for my little son and his gay young friend.
'No, I am the ordinary mortal, I maintain,' replied Mr. Hargrave.
'I will not allow myself to be worse than my fellows; but you,
Madam - I equally maintain there is nobody like you. But are you
happy?' he asked in a serious tone.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: so high, and I knew his father and mother. I am from the village
of Nedoshtchotova, and they, the Lesnitsky family, were not more
than three-quarters of a mile from us and less
than that, their ground next to ours, and Mr. Lesnitsky had a
sister, a God-fearing and tender-hearted lady. Lord keep the soul
of Thy servant Yulya, eternal memory to her! She was never
married, and when she was dying she divided all her property;
she left three hundred acres to the monastery, and six hundred
to the commune of peasants of Nedoshtchotova to commemorate her
soul; but her brother hid the will, they do say burnt it in the
stove, and took all this land for himself. He thought, to
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: went into Aunt Eliza's parlor, and found her impatient for her tea
and toast. She was crosser than the occasion warranted; but I
understood it when she gave me the outlines of a letter she desired
me to write to her lawyer in New York. Something had turned up, he
had written her; the Uxbridges believed that they had ferreted out
what would go against her. I told her that I had met the Uxbridge
carriage.
"One of them is in New York; how else could they be giving me
trouble just now?"
"There was a gentleman on horseback beside the carriage."
"Did he look mean and cunning?"
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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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: on earth: but by wise self-distrust, by silent labour, by lofty
self-control, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth
all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as
women now in tens of thousands set to those around them; such as
they will show more and more, the more their whole womanhood is
educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in
harmonious unity. Let the woman begin in girlhood, if such be her
happy lot--to quote the words of a great poet, a great
philosopher, and a great Churchman, William Wordsworth--let her
begin, I say -
With all things round about her drawn
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