| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: pains to make an acorn as to make a peach. She takes just as much
pains about the acorn which the pig eats, as about the acorn which
will grow into a tall oak, and help to build a great ship. She
took just as much pains, again, about the acorn which you crushed
under your foot just now, and which you fancy will never come to
anything. Madam How is wiser than that. She knows that it will
come to something. She will find some use for it, as she finds a
use for everything. That acorn which you crushed will turn into
mould, and that mould will go to feed the roots of some plant,
perhaps next year, if it lies where it is; or perhaps it will be
washed into the brook, and then into the river, and go down to the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: niches of a modern civilisation. Truly, a fitting couple to seek
the bayou banks.
They climbed the levee that stretched a feeble check to waters
that seldom rise, and on the other side of the embankment, at the
brink of the river, she sat on a log, and impatiently pulled off
the little cap she wore. The skies were gray, heavy, overcast,
with an occasional wind-rift in the clouds that only revealed new
depths of grayness behind; the tideless waters murmured a faint
ripple against the logs and jutting beams of the breakwater, and
were answered by the crescendo wail of the dried reeds on the
other bank,--reeds that rustled and moaned among themselves for
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: antipathy--embracing one another in his bosom, and both
concentrating themselves upon a being that had crept into his
vitals or been engendered there, and which was nourished with his
food, and lived upon his life, and was as intimate with him as
his own heart, and yet was the foulest of all created things! But
not the less was it the true type of a morbid nature.
Sometimes, in his moments of rage and bitter hatred against the
snake and himself, Roderick determined to be the death of him,
even at the expense of his own life. Once he attempted it by
starvation; but, while the wretched man was on the point of
famishing, the monster seemed to feed upon his heart, and to
Mosses From An Old Manse |
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 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: "You shall!--you must!"
"I would rather Diana or Mary informed you."
Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax:
gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.
"But I apprised you that I was a hard man," said he, "difficult to
persuade."
"And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off."
"And then," he pursued, "I am cold: no fervour infects me."
"Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has
thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has
streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you
Jane Eyre |
