| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: I cried out her name.
'M. de Berault,' she said, trembling. 'You did not expect to see
me?'
'I expected to see no one so little, Mademoiselle,' I answered,
striving to recover my composure.
'Yet you might have thought that we should not utterly desert
you,' she replied, with a reproachful humility which went to my
heart. 'We should have been base indeed, if we had not made some
attempt to save you. I thank Heaven, M. de Berault, that it has
so far succeeded that that strange man has promised me your life.
You have seen him?' she continued eagerly and in another tone,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: you.
HASTINGS. So that with eating above stairs, and drinking below, with
receiving your friends within, and amusing them without, you lead a
good pleasant bustling life of it.
HARDCASTLE. I do stir about a great deal, that's certain. Half the
differences of the parish are adjusted in this very parlour.
MARLOW. (After drinking.) And you have an argument in your cup, old
gentleman, better than any in Westminster-hall.
HARDCASTLE. Ay, young gentleman, that, and a little philosophy.
MARLOW. (Aside.) Well, this is the first time I ever heard of an
innkeeper's philosophy.
She Stoops to Conquer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: laboured, who lived not for themselves alone, and counted no costs? Would
the great statue, the great poem, the great reform ever be accomplished, if
men counted the cost and created for their own lives alone? And no man
liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. You cannot tell me not to
love the men who shall be after me; a soft voice within me, I know not
what, cries out ever, 'Live for them as for your own children.' When in
the circle of my own small life all is dark, and I despair, hope springs up
in me when I remember that something nobler and fairer may spring up in the
spot where I now stand.'
"And she said, 'You want to put everyone against us! The other women will
not call on me; and our church is more and more made up of poor people.
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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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Look at the cloth of my apparel;
Try me and test me, lock and barrel;
And own, to give the devil his due,
I have made more of life than you.
Yet I nor sought nor risked a life;
I shudder at an open knife;
The perilous seas I still avoided
And stuck to land whate'er betided.
I had no gold, no marble quarry,
I was a poor apothecary,
Yet here I stand, at thirty-eight,
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