| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: the morrow, and the last night at home approached - a sudden
anguish seemed to swell my heart. My dear friends looked so sad,
and spoke so very kindly, that I could scarcely keep my eyes from
overflowing: but I still affected to be gay. I had taken my last
ramble with Mary on the moors, my last walk in the garden, and
round the house; I had fed, with her, our pet pigeons for the last
time - the pretty creatures that we had tamed to peck their food
from our hands: I had given a farewell stroke to all their silky
backs as they crowded in my lap. I had tenderly kissed my own
peculiar favourites, the pair of snow-white fantails; I had played
my last tune on the old familiar piano, and sung my last song to
Agnes Grey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: simply that she had never before been so affected. She went all
the way. Mary and Cissy had been round together, in their single
superb person, to see him--he must live round the corner; they had
found that, in consequence of something they had come, precisely,
to make up for or to have another scene about, he had gone off--
gone off just on purpose to make them feel it; on which they had
come together to Cocker's as to the nearest place; where they had
put in the three forms partly in order not to put in the one alone.
The two others in a manner, covered it, muffled it, passed it off.
Oh yes, she went all the way, and this was a specimen of how she
often went. She would know the hand again any time. It was as
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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 Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: Baby, Very Human. I handed each parcel to Gip as it was ready,
and he clasped them to his chest.
He said very little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of
his arms was eloquent. He was the playground of unspeakable emotions.
These, you know, were REAL Magics. Then, with a start, I discovered
something moving about in my hat--something soft and jumpy. I whipped
it off, and a ruffled pigeon--no doubt a confederate--dropped out
and ran on the counter, and went, I fancy, into a cardboard box
behind the papier-mache tiger.
"Tut, tut!" said the shopman, dexterously relieving me of my headdress;
"careless bird, and--as I live--nesting!"
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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 The Purse by Honore de Balzac: and faded, regarding them as emblematic of an inner life devoid
of honor, idle and vicious. Are not our feelings written, as it
were, on the things about us?
Next morning he rose, not having slept. The heartache, that
terrible malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads. To lose the
bliss we dreamed of, to renounce our whole future, is a keener
pang than that caused by the loss of known happiness, however
complete it may have been; for is not Hope better than Memory?
The thoughts into which our spirit is suddenly plunged are like a
shoreless sea, in which we may swim for a moment, but where our
love is doomed to drown and die. And it is a frightful death. Are
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