| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: misery that her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up
strong in her. He was ruined past hope now; his destruction
would be immediate and sure, and he would be an outcast and friendless.
That was reason enough for a mother to love a child;
so she loved him, and told him so. It made him wince, secretly--
for she was a "nigger." That he was one himself was far from
reconciling him to that despised race.
Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he
responded uncomfortably, but as well as he could.
And she tried to comfort him, but that was not possible.
These intimacies quickly became horrible to him, and within the hour
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: true.
"Can the Snow Queen come in?" said the little girl.
"Only let her come in!" said the little boy. "Then I'd put her on the stove,
and she'd melt."
And then his grandmother patted his head and told him other stories.
In the evening, when little Kay was at home, and half undressed, he climbed up
on the chair by the window, and peeped out of the little hole. A few
snow-flakes were falling, and one, the largest of all, remained lying on the
edge of a flower-pot.
The flake of snow grew larger and larger; and at last it was like a young
lady, dressed in the finest white gauze, made of a million little flakes like
Fairy Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: were lined with maps and prints and a few works of reference.
Upon a table was a large-scale map of Egypt and the Soudan,
and another of Tonkin, on which, by the aid of coloured pins,
the progress of the different wars was being followed day by
day. A light, refreshing odour of the most delicate tobacco
hung upon the air; and a fire, not of foul coal, but of
clear-flaming resinous billets, chattered upon silver dogs.
In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat in a
morning muse, placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to
the rain upon the roof.
'Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,' said he, 'and have you since last
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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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: stockings, folded dresses, gloves, and whatever else was treasured
there. As every article in the great trunk was the sweeter for the
rose-scent, so did all the thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah and
Clifford, sombre as they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of
happiness from Phoebe's intermixture with them. Her activity of
body, intellect, and heart impelled her continually to perform the
ordinary little toils that offered themselves around her, and to
think the thought proper for the moment, and to sympathize,--now
with the twittering gayety of the robins in the pear-tree, and now
to such a depth as she could with Hepzibah's dark anxiety, or the
vague moan of her brother. This facile adaptation was at once the
House of Seven Gables |
