| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: up and down the East room ill the utmost confusion
of contrary feeling, before Sir Thomas's politeness
or apologies were over, or he had reached the beginning
of the joyful intelligence which his visitor came to communicate.
She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything;
agitated, happy, miserable, infinitely obliged,
absolutely angry. It was all beyond belief!
He was inexcusable, incomprehensible! But such were
his habits that he could do nothing without a mixture
of evil. He had previously made her the happiest
of human beings, and now he had insulted--she knew
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: the happiness of the streets. A wondrous thing, this Carnival!
But the old cronies down in Frenchtown, who know everything, and
can recite you many a story, tell of one sad heart on Mardi Gras
years ago. It was a woman's, of course; for "Il est toujours les
femmes qui sont malheureuses," says an old proverb, and perhaps
it is right. This woman--a child, she would be called elsewhere,
save in this land of tropical growth and precocity--lost her
heart to one who never knew, a very common story, by the way, but
one which would have been quite distasteful to the haughty judge,
her father, had he known.
Odalie was beautiful. Odalie was haughty too, but gracious
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: would give you a sovereign every Sunday morning, I would not have you
a seven-days' cabman again. We have known what it was to have no Sundays,
and now we know what it is to call them our own. Thank God,
you earn enough to keep us, though it is sometimes close work
to pay for all the oats and hay, the license, and the rent besides;
but Harry will soon be earning something, and I would rather struggle on
harder than we do than go back to those horrid times when you hardly had
a minute to look at your own children, and we never could go
to a place of worship together, or have a happy, quiet day.
God forbid that we should ever turn back to those times;
that's what I say, Jerry."
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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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: guns, its jaws distended to their utmost width. "Ah, you brute! you
have given me a lot of trouble for the last dozen years, and will, I
suppose to my dying day."
"Tell us the yarn, Quatermain," said Good. "You have often promised to
tell me, and you never have."
"You had better not ask me to," he answered, "for it is a longish one."
"All right," I said, "the evening is young, and there is some more
port."
Thus adjured, he filled his pipe from a jar of coarse-cut Boer tobacco
that was always standing on the mantelpiece, and still walking up and
down the room, began--
Long Odds |
