| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: "I'm told she's looking for a house. She means to live
here."
"I hear she means to get a divorce," said Janey
boldly.
"I hope she will!" Archer exclaimed.
The word had fallen like a bombshell in the pure and
tranquil atmosphere of the Archer dining-room. Mrs.
Archer raised her delicate eye-brows in the particular
curve that signified: "The butler--" and the young
man, himself mindful of the bad taste of discussing
such intimate matters in public, hastily branched off
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: which it had been won.
At twenty-two years of age the poor girl had been unable to find a
situation, so repulsive was her face to almost every one. Yet the
feeling was certainly unjust: the face would have been much admired on
the shoulders of a grenadier of the guard; but all things, so they
say, should be in keeping. Forced to leave a farm where she kept the
cows, because the dwelling-house was burned down, she came to Saumur
to find a place, full of the robust courage that shrinks from no
labor. Le Pere Grandet was at that time thinking of marriage and about
to set up his household. He espied the girl, rejected as she was from
door to door. A good judge of corporeal strength in his trade as a
Eugenie Grandet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: on the part of the Spaniard, and he knew how impossible it was for
his fifteen stone of flesh to give chase to the Spaniard's twelve.
But he was soon reassured; the Spaniard wheeled round towards him,
and began to put the rough hackney through all the paces of the
manege with a grace and skill which won applause from the
beholders.
"Thus!" he shouted, waving his hand to Amyas, between his curvets
and caracoles, "did my illustrious grandfather exhibit to the
Paynim emperor the prowess of a Castilian cavalier! Thus!--and
thus!--and thus, at last, he dashed up to his very feet, as I to
yours, and bespattering that unbaptized visage with his Christian
|
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 Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: colleagues, like myself, have enjoyed all things, are sated with all
things, and have reached the point when power and money are loved for
their own sake.
" 'Here,' he said, indicating his bare, chilly room, 'here the most
high-mettled gallant, who chafes at a word and draws swords for a
syllable elsewhere will entreat with clasped hands. There is no city
merchant so proud, no woman so vain of her beauty, no soldier of so
bold a spirit, but that they entreat me here, one and all, with tears
of rage or anguish in their eyes. Here they kneel--the famous artist,
and the man of letters, whose name will go down to posterity. Here, in
short' (he lifted his hand to his forehead), 'all the inheritances and
Gobseck |
