| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: ambitious man, burdened with a large family of children by a wife too
much beloved. He put too much faith in the Republic, laid in a stock
of scarlet wool, and manufactured those red-knitted caps that you may
have noticed on the heads of all the street urchins in Paris. How this
came about I am just going to tell you. The Republic was beaten. After
the Saint-Merri affair the caps were quite unsalable. Now, when a
weaver finds that besides a wife and children he has some ten thousand
red woolen caps in the house, and that no hatter will take a single
one of them, notions begin to pass through his head as fast as if he
were a banker racking his brains to get rid of ten million francs'
worth of shares in some dubious investment. As for this Law of the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the corral. As they moved by her she scrutinized them and her
heart dropped, for Brazos was not among them. He must
have been turned out into the pasture.
She passed over to the bars that closed the opening from
the corral into the pasture and wormed her way between two
of them. A hackamore with a piece of halter rope attached to
it hung across the upper bar. Taking it down she moved off
across the pasture in the direction the saddle horses most often
took when liberated from the corral.
If they had not crossed the river she felt that she might find
and catch Brazos, for lumps of sugar and bits of bread had
The Mucker |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: noises and odors.
She wondered as she regarded some of the grizzled women in the
room, mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out,
with heads bended over their work, tales of imagined or real
girlhood happiness, past drunks, the baby at home, and unpaid wages.
She speculated how long her youth would endure. She began to see
the bloom upon her cheeks as valuable.
She imagined herself, in an exasperating future, as a scrawny
woman with an eternal grievance. Too, she thought Pete to be
a very fastidious person concerning the appearance of women.
She felt she would love to see somebody entangle their fingers
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
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 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: you, Halford, whom, in spite of your occasional crustiness, I can
liken to nothing so well as an old coat, unimpeachable in texture,
but easy and loose - that has conformed itself to the shape of the
wearer, and which he may use as he pleases, without being bothered
with the fear of spoiling it; - whereas Mr. Lawrence was like a new
garment, all very neat and trim to look at, but so tight in the
elbows, that you would fear to split the seams by the unrestricted
motion of your arms, and so smooth and fine in surface that you
scruple to expose it to a single drop of rain.
Soon after the arrival of the guests, my mother mentioned Mrs.
Graham, regretted she was not there to meet them, and explained to
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
