| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: to be a gentlewoman, but was very willing to be a servant, and
that any kind of servant they thought fit to have me be.
But my new generous mistress, for she exceeded the good
woman I was with before, in everything, as well as in the
matter of estate; I say, in everything except honesty; and for
that, though this was a lady most exactly just, yet I must not
forget to say on all occasions, that the first, though poor, was
as uprightly honest as it was possible for any one to be.
I was no sooner carried away, as I have said, by this good
gentlewoman, but the first lady, that is to say, the Mayoress
that was, sent her two daughters to take care of me; and another
Moll Flanders |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: been. I might have slept there, and the whole thing have been a
dream.
`And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the
south-east corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest again
in the north-west, against the wall where you saw it. That gives
you the exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the
White Sphinx, into which the Morlocks had carried my machine.
`For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and
came through the passage here, limping, because my heel was still
painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the PALL MALL
GAZETTE on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed
The Time Machine |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: not in the quality of a central-fire gun, but as
Turgénieff's gun; but I did not succeed.
That is all that I can remember about this delightful,
naïvely cordial man, with the childlike eyes and the childlike
laugh, and in the picture my mind preserves of him the memory of
his grandeur melts into the charm of his good nature and
simplicity.
In 1883 my father received from Iván
Sergéyevitch his last farewell letter, written in pencil on
his death-bed, and I remember with what emotion he read it.
And when the news of his death came, my father would talk of
|
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: off, then, on his own. He wanted to go on thinking, telling himself the
story how Hume was stuck in a bog; he wanted to laugh. But first it
was nonsense to be anxious about Andrew. When he was Andrew's age he
used to walk about the country all day long, with nothing but a biscuit
in his pocket and nobody bothered about him, or thought that he had
fallen over a cliff. He said aloud he thought he would be off for a
day's walk if the weather held. He had had about enough of Bankes and
of Carmichael. He would like a little solitude. Yes, she said. It
annoyed him that she did not protest. She knew that he would never do
it. He was too old now to walk all day long with a biscuit in his
pocket. She worried about the boys, but not about him. Years ago,
To the Lighthouse |
