| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: that she was unhappy, although she had not been a month married.
But her rushing away thus from home, to see the last of a
relative whom she had hardly known in her life, proved nothing;
for Sue naturally did such things as those.
"Well, you have my good wishes now as always, Mrs. Phillotson."
She reproached him by a glance.
"No, you are not Mrs. Phillotson," murmured Jude. "You are dear,
free Sue Bridehead, only you don't know it! Wifedom has not yet
squashed up and digested you in its vast maw as an atom which has
no further individuality."
Sue put on a look of being offended, till she answered,
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: Ned Bannister. If people once get the idea that his hold isn't so
strong there's a hundred people that will testify against him.
We'll have him in a Government prison inside of six months."
"Or else he'll have us in a hole in the ground," added the
foreman, dryly.
"One or the other," admitted Bannister. "Are y'u in on this
thing?"
"I surely am. Y'u're the best man I've met up with in a month of
Sundays, seh. Y'u ain't got but one fault; and that is y'u don't
smoke cigareets. Feed yourself about a dozen a day and y'u won't
have a blamed trouble left. Match, seh?" The foreman of the Lazy
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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 Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: from men's observing eyes, he longed to be home, girt in by walls,
buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that
thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers
and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It
was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature,
lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should
preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold
more, with a slavish, superstitions terror, some scission in the
continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature.
He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating
consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant
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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 An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: "It is marked with a royal crown!" cried Sister Agathe.
The women, aghast, allowed the precious relic to fall. For their
simple souls the mystery that hung about the stranger grew
inexplicable; as for the priest, from that day forth he did not even
try to understand it.
Before very long the prisoners knew that, in spite of the Terror, some
powerful hand was extended over them. It began when they received
firewood and provisions; and next the Sisters knew that a woman had
lent counsel to their protector, for linen was sent to them, and
clothes in which they could leave the house without causing remark
upon the aristocrat's dress that they had been forced to wear. After
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