| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: held it for some time very close clasped in both her own, but she
said no more than "Thank you, monsieur."
We passed a divine day, and came home late, lighted by a full
summer moon.
Ten years rushed now upon me with dusty, vibrating, unresting
wings; years of bustle, action, unslacked endeavour; years in
which I and my wife, having launched ourselves in the full career
of progress, as progress whirls on in European capitals, scarcely
knew repose, were strangers to amusement, never thought of
indulgence, and yet, as our course ran side by side, as we
marched hand in hand, we neither murmured, repented, nor
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: melodious tongue.
Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying
all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her
children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her
breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an
interaction of man on man--a sort of breeding in and in, which
produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization
destined to have a speedy limit.
In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect
a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we
are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck
Walking |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: the hills, and some but of yesterday, and none finished; and all
the ends of it were open, so that you could go in from every side.
Yet it was in good repair, and all the chimneys smoked.
Jack went in through the gable; and there was one room after
another, all bare, but all furnished in part, so that a man could
dwell there; and in each there was a fire burning, where a man
could warm himself, and a table spread where he might eat. But
Jack saw nowhere any living creature; only the bodies of some
stuffed.
"This is a hospitable house," said Jack; "but the ground must be
quaggy underneath, for at every step the building quakes."
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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 Master of the World by Jules Verne: of a conflagration, accidental or intentional. Naturally I connected
this with the phenomena observed at the Great Eyrie, the flames which
rose above the crest, the noises which had so frightened the people
of Pleasant Garden and Morganton. But of what mechanisms were these
the fragments, and what reason had our captain for destroying them?
At this moment I felt a breath of air; a breeze came from the east.
The sky swiftly cleared. The hollow was filled with light from the
rays of the sun which appeared midway between the horizon and the
zenith.
A cry escaped me! The crest of the rocky wall rose a hundred feet
above me. And on the eastern side was revealed that easily
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