| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: subjects hourly fall into;--will you do one thing?
I beg and beseech you (in case you will do nothing better for us) that
wherever in any part of your dominions it so falls out, that three several
roads meet in one point, as they have done just here--that at least you set
up a guide-post in the centre of them, in mere charity, to direct an
uncertain devil which of the three he is to take.
Chapter 2.XVII.
Tho' the shock my uncle Toby received the year after the demolition of
Dunkirk, in his affair with widow Wadman, had fixed him in a resolution
never more to think of the sex--or of aught which belonged to it;--yet
corporal Trim had made no such bargain with himself. Indeed in my uncle
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: Fetch yours. To-night will settle the great issue
Whether the Prince's or the merchant's steel
Is better tempered. Was not that your word?
Fetch your own sword. Why do you tarry, sir?
SIMONE. My lord, of all the gracious courtesies
That you have showered on my barren house
This is the highest.
Bianca, fetch my sword.
Thrust back that stool and table. We must have
An open circle for our match at arms,
And good Bianca here shall hold the torch
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance
doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the
lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on
my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet
still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of
the avenger. Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the
draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of
transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll,
with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon
his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of
self-indulgence was rent from head to foot. I saw my life as a
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: and who survived to an age long beyond the natural term of man, to
see, in her cheerful and honoured old age, that knowledge become
popular and general which she pursued for many a year unassisted
and alone. Here, too, the scientific succession is still
maintained by Mr. Pengelly and Mr. Gosse, the latter of whom by his
delightful and, happily, well-known books has done more for the
study of marine zoology than any other living man. Torbay,
moreover, from the variety of its rocks, aspects, and sea-floors,
where limestones alternate with traps, and traps with slates, while
at the valley-mouth the soft sandstones and hard conglomerates of
the new red series slope down into the tepid and shallow waves,
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