| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: surprise, for he answered with a deprecating laugh: "Yes--she's
an awful simpleton, you know, Mrs. Stroud. Her only idea was to
have him done by a fashionable painter--ah, poor Stroud! She
thought it the surest way of proclaiming his greatness--of
forcing it on a purblind public. And at the moment I was THE
fashionable painter."
"Ah, poor Stroud--as you say. Was THAT his history?"
"That was his history. She believed in him, gloried in him--or
thought she did. But she couldn't bear not to have all the
drawing-rooms with her. She couldn't bear the fact that, on
varnishing days, one could always get near enough to see his
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,
Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest hours, observed as they flew,
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew;
And, privileg'd by age, desires to know
In brief, the grounds and motives of her woe.
So slides he down upon his grained bat,
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: from one another.
Then I took the pieces of cable which I had cut in the ship, and
laid them in rows, one upon another, within the circle, between
these two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in
the inside, leaning against them, about two feet and a half high,
like a spur to a post; and this fence was so strong, that neither
man nor beast could get into it or over it. This cost me a great
deal of time and labour, especially to cut the piles in the woods,
bring them to the place, and drive them into the earth.
The entrance into this place I made to be, not by a door, but by a
short ladder to go over the top; which ladder, when I was in, I
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: take the copy and the letter to Girard; but he must be quick. The will
must be under Esther's pillow before the lawyers affix the seals
here."
And he wrote out the following will:--
"Never having loved any one on earth but Monsieur Lucien Chardon
de Rubempre, and being resolved to end my life rather than relapse
into vice and the life of infamy from which he rescued me, I give
and bequeath to the said Lucien Chardon de Rubempre all I may
possess at the time of my decease, on condition of his founding a
mass in perpetuity in the parish church of Saint-Roch for the
repose of her who gave him her all, to her last thought.
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