| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: then than you had."
"Then you don't come regularly?"
"I have never seen either Germany or Switzerland before.
I have scarcely been out of England before."
"Why now"--he paused, to think briefly upon his words--"I
took it for granted you were showing Miss Madden around."
"It 's quite the other way about," she answered, with a
cold little laugh. "It is she who is showing me around.
It is her tour. I am the chaperone." Thorpe dwelt upon
the word in his mind. He understood what it meant only
in a way, but he was luminously clear as to the bitterness
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: mountain frondage, and sierras whitening above sierras,--and
phantom islands ringed around with lagoons of glory;---
Saw the toppling and smouldering of cloud-worlds after the
enormous conflagration of sunsets,--incandescence ruining into
darkness; and after it a moving and climbing of stars among the
blacknesses,--like searching lamps;--
Saw the deep kindle countless ghostly candles as for mysterious
night-festival,--and a luminous billowing under a black sky, and
effervescences of fire, and the twirling and crawling of
phosphoric foam;--
Saw the mesmerism of the Moon;--saw the enchanted tides
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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 Gambara by Honore de Balzac: Giardini as two abstractions.
Meanwhile, after a last piece of buffoonery from the deaf conductor in
reply to Gambara, the company had broken up laughing loudly. Giardini
went off to make coffee, which he begged the select few to accept, and
his wife cleared the table. The Count, sitting near the stove between
Marianna and Gambara, was in the very position which the mad musician
thought most desirable, with sensuousness on one side and idealism on
the other. Gambara finding himself for the first time in the society
of a man who did not laugh at him to his face, soon diverged from
generalities to talk of himself, of his life, his work, and the
musical regeneration of which he believed himself to be the Messiah.
Gambara |
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 Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: Richard sat at play with him in his own lodging, the boy grew talkative
through excess of wine. It happened naturally enough that Richard
sought an ally in Blake, just as Blake sought an ally in Richard.
Indeed, their fortunes - so far as Ruth was concerned - were bound
up together. The baronet saw that Richard, half-fuddled, was ripe for
any confidences that might aim at the destruction of his enemy. He
questioned him adroitly, and drew from him the story of the rising
that was being planned, and of the share that Mr. Wilding - one of the
Duke of Monmouth's chief movement-men - bore in the business that was
toward.
When, towards midnight, Richard Westmacott went home, he left in Sir
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