| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound
and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again,
against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer,
was the hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation.
I felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle,
so that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal.
I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination,
and on the perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window
was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert
the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation.
"No more, no more, no more!" I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: therefore all the more stubborn in her resentment. He bore this
state of things for about a week, when his engagements to lecture
in Ohio suddenly called him away. Abel and Miss Ringtop were left
to wander about the promontory in company, and to exchange
lamentations on the hollowness of human hopes or the pleasures of
despair. Whether it was owing to that attraction of sex which
would make any man and any woman, thrown together on a desert
island, finally become mates, or whether she skilfully ministered
to Abel's sentimental vanity, I will not undertake to decide: but
the fact is, they were actually betrothed, on leaving Arcadia.
I think he would willingly have retreated, after his return to the
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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 Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: [Enter the soldiers leading in Estrild.]
ESTRILD.
What prince so ere, adorned with golden crown,
Doth sway the regal scepter in his hand,
And thinks no chance can ever throw him down,
Or that his state shall everlasting stand:
Let him behold poor Estrild in this plight,
The perfect platform of a troubled wight.
Once was I guarded with manortial bands,
Compassed with princes of the noble blood;
Now am I fallen into my foemen's hands,
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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 Moby Dick by Herman Melville: battalions, so that their spouts all looked like flashing lines of
stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.
Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and
after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce the
chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave
animating token that they were now at last under the influence of
that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the
fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied. The
compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly and
steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout; and
like King Porus' elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander, they
Moby Dick |
