| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: Pray how do you like this head, Mr. Hastings?
HASTINGS. Extremely elegant and degagee, upon my word, madam. Your
friseur is a Frenchman, I suppose?
MRS. HARDCASTLE. I protest, I dressed it myself from a print in the
Ladies' Memorandum-book for the last year.
HASTINGS. Indeed! Such a head in a side-box at the play-house would
draw as many gazers as my Lady Mayoress at a City Ball.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. I vow, since inoculation began, there is no such
thing to be seen as a plain woman; so one must dress a little
particular, or one may escape in the crowd.
HASTINGS. But that can never be your case, madam, in any dress.
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: wrinkles.
"He has done us the service of getting a proper estimate on the value
of those paintings," he said, looking up at the pictures. "They will
be a noble ornament to the chapel of the Virgin." ("You shot a sarcasm
at me," thought he, "and there's another in return; we are quits,
madame.")
"If you intend to give them to Saint-Gatien, allow me to offer frames
that will be more suitable and worthy of the place, and of the works
themselves." ("I wish I could force you to betray that you have taken
Birotteau's things for your own," thought she.)
"They do not belong to me," said the priest, on his guard.
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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 Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: new, and she was old--they all forsook her and followed me. They
worshipped me. It was to my door that the flowers came; it was I had
twenty horses offered me when I could only ride one; it was for me they
waited at street corners; it was what I said and did that they talked of.
Partly I liked it. I had lived alone all my life; no one ever had told me
I was beautiful and a woman. I believed them. I did not know it was
simply a fashion, which one man had set and the rest followed
unreasoningly. I liked them to ask me to marry them, and to say, No. I
despised them. The mother heart had not swelled in me yet; I did not know
all men were my children, as the large woman knows when her heart is grown.
I was too small to be tender. I liked my power. I was like a child with a
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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 Master of the World by Jules Verne: The land, though not situated far northward, is exposed to the full
sweep of the Arctic cold. The region to the northward is low, and the
winds of winter rush down with extreme violence. Hence Lake Erie is
sometimes frozen over from shore to shore.
The principal cities on the borders of this great lake are Buffalo at
the east, which belongs to New York State, and Toledo in Ohio, at the
west, with Cleveland and Sandusky, both Ohio cities, at the south.
Smaller towns and villages are numerous along the shore. The traffic
is naturally large, its annual value being estimated at considerably
over two million dollars.
Our carriage followed a rough and little used road along the borders
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