| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: "I dunno, I'm sure," said the elder sister, wiping her
spectacles before proceeding to a close examination of the clock.
With anxiously bent heads the two women shook and turned it,
as though they were trying to revive a living thing; but it
remained unresponsive to their touch, and at length Evelina laid it
down with a sigh.
"Seems like somethin' DEAD, don't it, Ann Eliza? How
still the room is!"
"Yes, ain't it?"
"Well, I'll put her back where she belongs," Evelina
continued, in the tone of one about to perform the last offices for
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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 Lesson of the Master by Henry James: regularity!" St. George went on.
"And with a splendour!" added the polite General, while Paul noted
how little the author of "Shadowmere" minded, as he phrased it to
himself, when addressed as a celebrated story-teller. The young
man had an idea HE should never get used to that; it would always
make him uncomfortable - from the suspicion that people would think
they had to - and he would want to prevent it. Evidently his great
colleague had toughened and hardened - had made himself a surface.
The group of men had finished their cigars and taken up their
bedroom candlesticks; but before they all passed out Lord
Watermouth invited the pair of guests who had been so absorbed
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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 Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: two engines, one upon the other. On the heathy margin of the line
were many people running to and fro, and crying aloud as they
ran, and many others lying motionless like sleeping tramps.
Morris suddenly drew an inference. 'There has been an accident'
thought he, and was elated at his perspicacity. Almost at the
same time his eye lighted on John, who lay close by as white as
paper. 'Poor old John! poor old cove!' he thought, the schoolboy
expression popping forth from some forgotten treasury, and he
took his brother's hand in his with childish tenderness. It was
perhaps the touch that recalled him; at least John opened his
eyes, sat suddenly up, and after several ineffectual movements of
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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 Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: cannot have entirely rejected me--not entirely--yet half love is no love!--I
will endure it no longer!--Can it be true what a friend lately whispered in
my ear, that she secretly admits a man into the house by night, when she
always sends me away modestly before evening? No, it cannot be true! It
is a lie! A base, slanderous lie! Clara is as innocent as I am wretched.--She
has rejected me, has thrust me from her heart--and shall I live on thus? I
cannot, I will not endure it. Already my native land is convulsed by
internal strife, and do I perish abjectly amid the tumult? I will not endure
it! When the trumpet sounds, when a shot falls, it thrills through my bone
and marrow! But, alas, it does not rouse me! It does not summon me to
join the onslaught, to rescue, to dare.--Wretched, degrading position!
Egmont |
