| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: that, nevertheless, when he did turn about she could see him time
himself--she was freshly taken up--and cross straight to her postal
subordinate, whom some one else had released. He had in his hand
all this while neither letters nor telegrams, and now that he was
close to her--for she was close to the counter-clerk--it brought
her heart into her mouth merely to see him look at her neighbour
and open his lips. She was too nervous to bear it. He asked for a
Post-Office Guide, and the young man whipped out a new one;
whereupon he said he wished not to purchase, but only to consult
one a moment; with which, the copy kept on loan being produced, he
once more wandered off.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: latch of the outside door clicked and a tall white-bearded
peasant, with a sheepskin coat thrown over his white holiday
shirt, pushed his way out holding the door firmly against the
wind, followed by a lad in a red shirt and high leather boots.
'Is that you, Andreevich?' asked the old man.
'Yes, friend, we've gone astray,' said Vasili Andreevich. 'We
wanted to get to Goryachkin but found ourselves here. We went
a second time but lost our way again.'
'Just see how you have gone astray!' said the old man.
'Petrushka, go and open the gate!' he added, turning to the lad
in the red shirt.
Master and Man |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: lips of my old friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Quatermain, as we used
to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening when I was
stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after
that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that he immediately
left England, accompanied by two companions, his old fellow-voyagers,
Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and has now utterly vanished into the
dark heart of Africa. He is persuaded that a white people, of which he
has heard rumours all his life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the
vast, still unexplored interior, and his great ambition is to find them
before he dies. This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions
have departed, and from which I shrewdly suspect they never will return.
Long Odds |
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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: revelation to the young man.
"You love romance," he said, addressing her. "Let me, in this moment
of happiness, tell you mine; and you shall tell me in return whether
the conclusion of the tale I have invented for my life is possible. To
me wealth would bring greater happiness than to other men; for the
highest happiness I can imagine would be to enrich the one I loved.
You, mademoiselle, who know so many things, tell me if it is possible
for a man to make himself beloved independently of his person, be it
handsome or ugly, and for his spirit only?"
Modeste raised her eyes and looked at Butscha. It was a piercing and
questioning glance; for she shared Dumay's suspicion of Butscha's
Modeste Mignon |
