| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: implore the protection of M. de Villefort; she did not
obtain it, however, and went to visit the old man; when she
saw him so miserable and heart-broken, having passed a
sleepless night, and not touched food since the previous
day, she wished him to go with her that she might take care
of him; but the old man would not consent. `No,' was the old
man's reply, `I will not leave this house, for my poor dear
boy loves me better than anything in the world; and if he
gets out of prison he will come and see me the first thing,
and what would he think if I did not wait here for him?' I
heard all this from the window, for I was anxious that
The Count of Monte Cristo |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: continually move, but not by measurable marches on a stable
course; the political soil itself steals forth by
imperceptible degrees, like a travelling glacier, carrying on
its bosom not only political parties but their flag-posts and
cantonments; so that what appears to be an eternal city
founded on hills is but a flying island of Laputa. It is for
this reason in particular that we are all becoming Socialists
without knowing it; by which I would not in the least refer
to the acute case of Mr. Hyndman and his horn-blowing
supporters, sounding their trumps of a Sunday within the
walls of our individualist Jericho - but to the stealthy
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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 Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: mental nourishment from the Police Gazette and the
Fireside Weekly; but her lot was cast in a circle where such
insinuations were not likely to be heard, and where the title-role
in blood-curdling drama had long been her recognized right.
"Yes," she was now saying, her emphatic eyes on Ann Eliza,
"you may not believe it, Miss Bunner, and I don't know's I
should myself if anybody else was to tell me, but over a year
before ever I was born, my mother she went to see a gypsy fortune-
teller that was exhibited in a tent on the Battery with the green-
headed lady, though her father warned her not to--and what you
s'pose she told her? Why, she told her these very words--says she:
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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 Persuasion by Jane Austen: How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval
had banished into distance and indistinctness! What might not
eight years do? Events of every description, changes, alienations,
removals--all, all must be comprised in it, and oblivion of the past--
how natural, how certain too! It included nearly a third part
of her own life.
Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings
eight years may be little more than nothing.
Now, how were his sentiments to be read? Was this like
wishing to avoid her? And the next moment she was hating herself
for the folly which asked the question.
Persuasion |
