| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: she owes it to the Honour of her sex to endeavour to outwit him--
LADY TEAZLE. Indeed--So that if He suspects me without cause
it follows that the best way of curing his jealousy is to give him
reason for't--
SURFACE. Undoubtedly--for your Husband [should] never be deceived
in you--and in that case it becomes you to be frail in compliment
to his discernment--
LADY TEAZLE. To be sure what you say is very reasonable--and when
the consciousness of my own Innocence----
SURFACE. Ah: my dear--Madam there is the great mistake--'tis this
very conscious Innocence that is of the greatest Prejudice to you--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: library by sinking back on a couch in graceful mortuary
attitudes, trying to determine whether he would, when his day
came, be found with his arms crossed piously over his chest
(Monsignor Darcy had once advocated this posture as being the
most distinguished), or with his hands clasped behind his head, a
more pagan and Byronic attitude.
What interested him much more than the final departure of his
father from things mundane was a tri-cornered conversation
between Beatrice, Mr. Barton, of Barton and Krogman, their
lawyers, and himself, that took place several days after the
funeral. For the first time he came into actual cognizance of the
This Side of Paradise |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: "Lucien? An Antinous and a great poet. I worshiped him in all
conscience, and I might have been happy. But he was in love with a
girl of the town; and I gave him up to Madame. de Serizy. . . . If he
had cared to love me, should I have given him up?"
"What an odd thing, that you should come into collision with an Esther!"
"She was handsomer than I," said the Princess.--"Very soon it shall be
three years that I have lived in solitude," she resumed, after a
pause, "and this tranquillity has nothing painful to me about it. To
you alone can I dare to say that I feel I am happy. I was surfeited
with adoration, weary of pleasure, emotional on the surface of things,
but conscious that emotion itself never reached my heart. I have found
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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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: Sunday and her pious little nurse's conversation having run, as it seems,
on heaven and angels.
Her questions about the lieber Gott are better left unrecorded,
and I was relieved when she began about the angels.
"What do they wear for clothes?" she asked in her German-English.
"Why, you've seen them in pictures," I answered,
"in beautiful, long dresses, and with big, white wings."
"Feathers?" she asked.
"I suppose so,--and long dresses, all white and beautiful."
"Are they girlies?"
"Girls? Ye--es."
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
