| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled,
comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will
with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment
of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid
nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and
left me faint; and then as in its turn faintness subsided, I began
to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater
boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of
obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my
shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy.
I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safe of
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: some of its contents to Desiree. Then I returned to the edge of
the water and ate my portion alone. That meal was one scarcely
calculated for the pleasures of companionship or conviviality.
It was several hours after that before Harry awoke, the
greater part of which Desiree and I were silent.
I would have given something to have known her thoughts; my
own were not very pleasant. It is always a disagreeable thing to
discover that some one else knows you better than you know
yourself. And Desiree had cut deep. At the time I thought her
unjust; time alone could have told which of us was right. If she
were here with me now--but she is not.
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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 A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: marches in this country; an army here is a great city well peopled
and under exact government: they take their wives and children with
them, and the camp hath its streets, its market places, its
churches, courts of justice, judges, and civil officers.
Before they set forward, they advertise the governors of provinces
through which they are to pass, that they may take care to furnish
what is necessary for the subsistence of the troops. These
governors give notice to the adjacent places that the army is to
march that way on such a day, and that they are assessed such a
quantity of bread, beer, and cows. The peasants are very exact in
supplying their quota, being obliged to pay double the value in case
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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 The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: surmounted by waves of brown hair, curling and soft, and that the
head was set on a pair of shoulders decked in military uniform.
Then the brown eyes marched away with the rest of the rear guard,
and the white-bonneted sisters filed out the side door, through
the narrow court, back into the brown convent.
That night Sister Josepha tossed more than usual on her hard bed,
and clasped her fingers often in prayer to quell the wickedness
in her heart. Turn where she would, pray as she might, there was
ever a pair of tender, pitying brown eyes, haunting her
persistently. The squeaky organ at vespers intoned the clank of
military accoutrements to her ears, the white bonnets of the
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
