| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: here this last hour, hain't I, Nance?" he said to the woman
who meditatively sipped her ale near him.
"Faith, that you have. I came in for my quiet supper-
time half-pint, and you were here then, as well as all the
rest."
The other constable was facing the clock-case, where he saw
reflected in the glass a quick motion by the landlady.
Turning sharply, he caught her closing the oven-door.
"Something curious about that oven, ma'am!" he observed
advancing, opening it, and drawing out a tambourine.
"Ah," she said apologetically, "that's what we keep here to
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: me, laughing like, that I'd gone with the two chiefs on their visit
to Big Hand. I hadn't told. Red Jacket hadn't told, and Toby, of
course, didn't know. 'Twas just Talleyrand's guess. "Now," he
says, my English and Red Jacket's French was so bad that I am
not sure I got the rights of what the President really said to the
unsophisticated Huron. Do me the favour of telling it again." I
told him every word Red Jacket had told him and not one word
more. I had my suspicions, having just come from an emigre party
where the Marquise was hating and praising him as usual.
'"Much obliged," he said. "But I couldn't gather from Red
Jacket exactly what the President said to Monsieur Genet, or to
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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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: the bridge too.--It was a thousand to one, my uncle Toby would add, that
the poor fellow did not break his leg.--Ay truly, my father would say--a
limb is soon broke, brother Toby, in such encounters.--And so, an' please
your honour, the bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was
broke down betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces.
At other times, but especially when my uncle Toby was so unfortunate as to
say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards--my father would exhaust
all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a
panegyric upon the Battering-Rams of the ancients--the Vinea which
Alexander made use of at the siege of Troy.--He would tell my uncle Toby of
the Catapultae of the Syrians, which threw such monstrous stones so many
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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 Pericles by William Shakespeare: But have been gazed on like a cornet: she speaks,
My lord, that, may be, hath endured a grief
Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh'd.
Though wayward fortune did malign my state,
My derivation was from ancestors
Who stood equivalent with mighty kings:
But time hath rooted out my parentage,
And to the world and awkward casualties
Bound me in servitude.
[Aside.]
I will desist;
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