| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: handling the clarinet so masterly by now!"
"I can mind it," said the furze-cutter. "'Twas a wonderful
thing that one body could hold it all and never mix
the fingering."
"There was Kingsbere church likewise," Fairway recommenced,
as one opening a new vein of the same mine of interest.
Wildeve breathed the breath of one intolerably bored,
and glanced through the partition at the prisoners.
"He used to walk over there of a Sunday afternoon to visit
his old acquaintance Andrew Brown, the first clarinet there;
a good man enough, but rather screechy in his music,
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: only line she retained--CANST THOU DRAW OUT LEVIATHAN WITH A
HOOK?--was one she had never yet found the occasion to apply.
To-day she felt that even the complete mastery of the volume
would hardly have insured her self-possession; for she thought it
probable, even if she DID, in some miraculous way, remember an
Allusion, it would be only to find that Osric Dane used a
different volume (Mrs. Leveret was convinced that literary people
always carried them), and would consequently not recognise her
quotations.
Mrs. Leveret's sense of being adrift was intensified by the
appearance of Mrs. Ballinger's drawing-room. To a careless eye
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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 Lady Susan by Jane Austen: continues to exist, between you and the man whose family you robbed of its
peace in return for the hospitality with which you were received into it;
that you have corresponded with him ever since your leaving Langford; not
with his wife, but with him, and that he now visits you every day. Can you,
dare you deny it? and all this at the time when I was an encouraged, an
accepted lover! From what have I not escaped! I have only to be grateful.
Far from me be all complaint, every sigh of regret. My own folly had
endangered me, my preservation I owe to the kindness, the integrity of
another; but the unfortunate Mrs. Mainwaring, whose agonies while she
related the past seemed to threaten her reason, how is SHE to be consoled!
After such a discovery as this, you will scarcely affect further wonder at
Lady Susan |
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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: opened, and the figure appeared at it, beckoning and nodding to
him, with a familiarity somewhat terrifying. John now started up,
determined to pursue it; but the pursuit was stopped by the weak
but shrill cries of his uncle, who was struggling at once with the
agonies of death and his housekeeper. The poor woman, anxious for
her master's reputation and her own, was trying to put on him a
clean shirt and nightcap, and Melmoth, who had just sensation
enough to perceive they were taking something from him, continued
exclaiming feebly, "They are robbing me,--robbing me in my last
moments,--robbing a dying man. John, won't you assist me,--I shall
die a beggar; they are taking my last shirt,--I shall die a
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