| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: head; and being taken with his drugs, and associated in the
minds of his auditors with stuffed sea-monsters, bottled
serpents, and his own visage, which is a title-page of
tribulation, they have spread great gloom through the minds of
the people of Little Britain. They shake their heads whenever
they go by Bow Church, and observe, that they never expected
any good to come of taking down that steeple, which in old
times told nothing but glad tidings, as the history of
Whittington and his Cat bears witness.
The rival oracle of Little Britain is a substantial
cheesemonger, who lives in a fragment of one of the old family
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: my senses as ever I was in my life." He then grew serious, and
desired to ask me freely, "whether I were not troubled in my mind
by the consciousness of some enormous crime, for which I was
punished, at the command of some prince, by exposing me in that
chest; as great criminals, in other countries, have been forced
to sea in a leaky vessel, without provisions: for although he
should be sorry to have taken so ill a man into his ship, yet he
would engage his word to set me safe ashore, in the first port
where we arrived." He added, "that his suspicions were much
increased by some very absurd speeches I had delivered at first
to his sailors, and afterwards to himself, in relation to my
Gulliver's Travels |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: CHAPTER V
This was neither more nor less than the queer extension of her
experience, the double life that, in the cage, she grew at last to
lead. As the weeks went on there she lived more and more into the
world of whiffs and glimpses, she found her divinations work faster
and stretch further. It was a prodigious view as the pressure
heightened, a panorama fed with facts and figures, flushed with a
torrent of colour and accompanied with wondrous world-music. What
it mainly came to at this period was a picture of how London could
amuse itself; and that, with the running commentary of a witness so
exclusively a witness, turned for the most part to a hardening of
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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 Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: my lord, very long for a woman, and I confess to you, that
not a year has passed I have not regretted Spain."
"Not one year, madame?" said the young duke coldly. "Not one
of those years when you reigned Queen of Beauty -- as you
still are, indeed?"
"A truce to flattery, duke, for I am old enough to be your
mother." She emphasized these latter words in a manner, and
with a gentleness, which penetrated Buckingham's heart.
"Yes," she said, "I am old enough to be your mother; and for
this reason, I will give you a word of advice."
"That advice being that I should return to London?" he
Ten Years Later |
