| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: her bedroom. As the eyes in the photograph met hers, she felt it
would be impossible to read what was said of him, and closed her
lids with the sharpness of the pain.
"I thought if you felt disposed to put your name down--" she
heard Parvis continue.
She opened her eyes with an effort, and they fell on the other
portrait. It was that of a youngish man, slightly built, in
rough clothes, with features somewhat blurred by the shadow of a
projecting hat-brim. Where had she seen that outline before?
She stared at it confusedly, her heart hammering in her throat
and ears. Then she gave a cry.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: Let some cry up woodcock or hare,
Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons;
But of all the GAY birds in the air,
Here's a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons.
Toroddle, toroddle, toroll.
OMNES. Bravo, bravo!
FIRST FELLOW. The 'squire has got spunk in him.
SECOND FELLOW. I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us
nothing that's low.
THIRD FELLOW. O damn anything that's low, I cannot bear it.
FOURTH FELLOW. The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time: if so
She Stoops to Conquer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: hand, and flung himself down on the carpets of dyed goat's-hair.
And when he had covered himself with a covering of black lamb's-
wool he fell asleep.
And three hours before dawn, and while it was still night, his Soul
waked him and said to him, 'Rise up and go to the room of the
merchant, even to the room in which he sleepeth, and slay him, and
take from him his gold, for we have need of it.'
And the young Fisherman rose up and crept towards the room of the
merchant, and over the feet of the merchant there was lying a
curved sword, and the tray by the side of the merchant held nine
purses of gold. And he reached out his hand and touched the sword,
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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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: something that she had given, in her charity, without his having,
by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another
encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had
been simply at first not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not
done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had
endless gratitude to make up. Only for that he must see just how
he had figured to her. "What, exactly, was the account I gave--?"
"Of the way you did feel? Well, it was very simple. You said you
had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you,
the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly
prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you,
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