| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem. Her face
was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain
thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle
Ages. Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint. Everything
about her erred, as it were, by an excess of delicacy.
M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be introduced to the
Duchesse de Langeais; and she, after the manner of persons whose
sensitive taste leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from
overwhelming him with questions and compliments. She received
him with a gracious deference which could not fail to flatter a
man of more than ordinary powers, for the fact that a man rises
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: the hedgerow trees were still fairly green, shot through with bright
autumnal yellows, bright as sunshine. But a little way off, the
solid bricks of woodland that lay squarely on slope and hill-top were
not green, but russet and grey, and ever less russet and more grey as
they drew off into the distance. As they drew off into the distance,
also, the woods seemed to mass themselves together, and lie thin and
straight, like clouds, upon the limit of one's view. Not that this
massing was complete, or gave the idea of any extent of forest, for
every here and there the trees would break up and go down into a
valley in open order, or stand in long Indian file along the horizon,
tree after tree relieved, foolishly enough, against the sky. I say
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: were lazying along home in the middle of the afternoon, when we met
Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and he saluted and asked the
Lieutenant-General if she had heard the news, and she said no, and
he said:
"'Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot this side of
Clayton, and Thorndike the scout, too; Bill couldn't travel, but
Thorndike could, and he brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and
six men of Company B are gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to get Bill.
And they say - '
"'GO!' she shouts to me - and I went."
"Fast?"
|
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 A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: that sermon was not my own at all, but was suggested to me by a
young man named Smith--the same whom I have mentioned to you as
coming from this parish. I thought the idea rather ingenious at
the time, and enlarged it to the weight of a few guineas, because
I had nothing else in my head.'
'Which idea do you call the text? I am curious to know that.'
'Well, this,' said Knight, somewhat unwillingly. 'That experience
teaches, and your sweetheart, no less than your tailor, is
necessarily very imperfect in her duties, if you are her first
patron: and conversely, the sweetheart who is graceful under the
initial kiss must be supposed to have had some practice in the
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
