| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: playing, ``Sister.''
Bessie Bell laughed at that.
``Oh, she is not a Sister!'' said Bessie Bell.
``Yes, she is; she is my sister!'' said the little girl.
``No,'' said Bessie Bell, just as great grown people said to her when
she remembered strange things, ``No, there never was in the world a
Sister like that!''
Then the smaller of the little girls who were playing together ran
to the larger one, and caught hold of her hand, and they stood
together in front of Bessie Bell--they both had long black curls,
but Bessie Bell had short golden curls--and the smaller girl said:
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: got my gun well on to the lion's shoulder--the black-maned one--so as to
allow for an inch or two of motion, and catch him through the heart. I
was on, dead on, and my finger was just beginning to tighten on the
trigger, when suddenly I went blind--a bit of reed-ash had drifted into
my right eye. I danced and rubbed, and succeeded in clearing it more or
less just in time to see the tail of the last lion vanishing round the
bushes up the kloof.
"If ever a man was mad I was that man. It was too bad; and such a shot
in the open! However, I was not going to be beaten, so I just turned
and marched for the kloof. Tom, the driver, begged and implored me not
to go, but though as a general rule I never pretend to be very brave
Long Odds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: before him--but there was no getting away, no pause; and, to my
utter astonishment, I found, when he (finding me nowhere else)
joined me there at last, that I had been actually sitting with them
very nearly three-quarters of an hour. The good lady had not given me
the possibility of escape before."
"And how did you think Miss Fairfax looking?"
"Ill, very ill--that is, if a young lady can ever be allowed to look ill.
But the expression is hardly admissible, Mrs. Weston, is it?
Ladies can never look ill. And, seriously, Miss Fairfax is naturally
so pale, as almost always to give the appearance of ill health.--
A most deplorable want of complexion."
Emma |
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 Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the
insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed
no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause
of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less
fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray
to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces;
Second Inaugural Address |
