| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: Filby. But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim
among his elements, and we distrusted him. Things that would
have made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his
hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily. The serious
people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his
deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their
reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery
with egg-shell china. So I don't think any of us said very much
about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and
the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of
our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical
The Time Machine |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Till we had reach'd the river, I from speech
Abstain'd. And lo! toward us in a bark
Comes on an old man hoary white with eld,
Crying, "Woe to you wicked spirits! hope not
Ever to see the sky again. I come
To take you to the other shore across,
Into eternal darkness, there to dwell
In fierce heat and in ice. And thou, who there
Standest, live spirit! get thee hence, and leave
These who are dead." But soon as he beheld
I left them not, "By other way," said he,
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: come back, their French disrepute is their stock in trade."
"I think," said the cheerful Hope, "that it is not quite so
bad." Hope always thought things not so bad. She went on. "I
was very dull not to know what Mrs. Meredith was talking about.
Helen Meredith is a warm-hearted, generous girl, and will not
go far wrong, though her mother is not as wise as she is
well-bred. But Kate forgets that the few hundred people one
sees here or at Paris do not represent the nation, after all."
"The most influential part of it," said Emilia.
"Are you sure, dear?" said her sister. "I do not think they
influence it half so much as a great many people who are too
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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 Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: inequality of temper, which had its source in sufferings at once
secret and known to all. The Comte de Kergarouet had some influence
over her, thanks to his increased prodigality, a kind of consolation
which rarely fails of its effect on a Parisian girl.
The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine appeared was at the
Neapolitan ambassador's. As she took her place in the first quadrille
she saw, a few yards away from her, Maximilien Longueville, who nodded
slightly to her partner.
"Is that young man a friend of yours?" she asked, with a scornful air.
"Only my brother," he replied.
Emilie could not help starting. "Ah!" he continued, "and he is the
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