| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: a Holothurian and a Cephalopod; for it was fixed in his little head
that if a man with clothes on caught him, he might put clothes on
him too, and make a dirty black chimney-sweep of him again. But,
when the professor poked him, it was more than he could bear; and,
between fright and rage, he turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse
in a corner, and bit the professor's finger till it bled.
"Oh! ah! yah!" cried he; and glad of an excuse to be rid of Tom,
dropped him on to the seaweed, and thence he dived into the water
and was gone in a moment.
"But it was a water-baby, and I heard it speak!" cried Ellie. "Ah,
it is gone!" And she jumped down off the rock, to try and catch
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: "They'll replace the sums you have paid for him."
"Ah!" cried Florine, "didn't I kill myself body and soul in the
provinces to get him money,--I, who'd have cut my hand off to serve
him? But that's men! damn your soul for them and they'll march over
you rough-shod! He shall pay me for this!"
Madame de Vandenesse was disappearing with the letters.
"Hi! stop, stop, my fine mask!" cried Florine; "leave me one to
confound him with."
"Not possible," said Vandenesse.
"Why not?"
"That mask is your ex-rival; but you needn't fear her now."
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: it had been formerly thought by him to be, and he looked upon
it now with a just and religious abhorrence.
I cannot but observe also, and leave it for the direction of my
sex in such cases of pleasure, that whenever sincere repentance
succeeds such a crime as this, there never fails to attend a
hatred of the object; and the more the affection might seem to
be before, the hatred will be the more in proportion. It will
always be so, indeed it can be no otherwise; for there cannot
be a true and sincere abhorrence of the offence, and the love
to the cause of it remain; there will, with an abhorrence of the
sin, be found a detestation of the fellow-sinner; you can expect
Moll Flanders |
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 Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: tarnished gold. But then the sheets, pillows, and blankets
looked delightful to the campaigner, when he thought of his
"mansion, the cask." There was an air of gloom in the tapestry
hangings, which, with their worn-out graces, curtained the walls
of the little chamber, and gently undulated as the autumnal
breeze found its way through the ancient lattice window, which
pattered and whistled as the air gained entrance. The toilet,
too, with its mirror, turbaned after the manner of the beginning
of the century, with a coiffure of murrey-coloured silk, and its
hundred strange-shaped boxes, providing for arrangements which
had been obsolete for more than fifty years, had an antique, and
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