| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: protectors - could conceive even she had inherited money. I was at
a pass of my own fortunes when keeping hansoms at doors seemed to
me pure swagger. As a trick of this bold and sensitive girl,
however, it became romantic - a part of the general romance of her
freedom, her errand, her innocence. The confidence of young
Americans was notorious, and I speedily arrived at a conviction
that no impulse could have been more generous than the impulse that
had operated here. I foresaw at that moment that it would make her
my peculiar charge, just as circumstances had made Neil Paraday.
She would be another person to look after, so that one's honour
would be concerned in guiding her straight. These things became
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: productions and fixed it upon the tantalizing mystery of this new
project.
Copley, the celebrated painter, then a young man and a resident
of Boston, came one day to visit Drowne; for he had recognized so
much of moderate ability in the carver as to induce him, in the
dearth of professional sympathy, to cultivate his acquaintance.
On entering the shop, the artist glanced at the inflexible image
of king, commander, dame, and allegory, that stood around, on the
best of which might have been bestowed the questionable praise
that it looked as if a living man had here been changed to wood,
and that not only the physical, but the intellectual and
Mosses From An Old Manse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a
singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself,
as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the
melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the
first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom
pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was
unrelieved by any of that half-pleasureable, because poetic,
sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest
natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the
scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant
The Fall of the House of Usher |
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 Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: whatever she was cooking until she was satisfied, and said: 'The cook
must know what the food is like.'
It came to pass that the master one day said to her: 'Gretel, there is
a guest coming this evening; prepare me two fowls very daintily.' 'I
will see to it, master,' answered Gretel. She killed two fowls,
scalded them, plucked them, put them on the spit, and towards evening
set them before the fire, that they might roast. The fowls began to
turn brown, and were nearly ready, but the guest had not yet arrived.
Then Gretel called out to her master: 'If the guest does not come, I
must take the fowls away from the fire, but it will be a sin and a
shame if they are not eaten the moment they are at their juiciest.'
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
