| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: Dora Forbes, it's true, at the present hour, is immensely pushed by
Mrs. Wimbush and has sat for his portrait to the young artists she
protects, sat for it not only in oils but in monumental alabaster.
What happened at Prestidge later in the day is of course
contemporary history. If the interruption I had whimsically
sanctioned was almost a scandal, what is to be said of that general
scatter of the company which, under the Doctor's rule, began to
take place in the evening? His rule was soothing to behold, small
comfort as I was to have at the end. He decreed in the interest of
his patient an absolutely soundless house and a consequent break-up
of the party. Little country practitioner as he was, he literally
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: the wind would make a sally nearer hand, and send a shrill,
whistling crash among the foliage on our side of the glen;
and sometimes a back-draught would strike into the elbow
where we sat, and cast the gravel and torn leaves into our
faces. But for the most part, this great, streaming gale
passed unweariedly by us into Napa Valley, not two hundred
yards away, visible by the tossing boughs, stunningly
audible, and yet not moving a hair upon our heads. So it
blew all night long while I was writing up my journal, and
after we were in bed, under a cloudless, starset heaven; and
so it was blowing still next morning when we rose.
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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 The Virginian by Owen Wister: difficult one. Her woman's fortress was shaken by a force unknown
to her before. Sam Bannett did not have it in him to look as this
man could look, when the cold lustre of his eyes grew hot with
internal fire. What color they were baffled her still. "Can it
possibly change?" she wondered. It seemed to her that sometimes
when she had been looking from a rock straight down into clear
sea water, this same color had lurked in its depths. "Is it
green, or is it gray?" she asked herself, but did not turn just
now to see. She kept her face toward the landscape.
"All men are born equal," he now remarked slowly.
"Yes," she quickly answered, with a combative flash. "Well?"
The Virginian |
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 When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw
above and opposed to him had at first seized his
attention to the exclusion of anything else. Then suddenly
he discovered the roadway! It was not a roadway at
all, as Graham understood such things, for in the
nineteenth century the only roads and streets were
beaten tracks of motionless earth, jostling rivulets of
vehicles between narrow footways. But this roadway
was three hundred feet across, and it moved; it moved,
all save the middle, the lowest part. For a moment,
the motion dazzled his mind. Then he understood.
When the Sleeper Wakes |
