| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: the noise of which he fancied he could hear yet; and now, with an
awful shock, he had reached the bottom, and behold! he was alive
and whole, and Dain was dead with all his bones broken. It
struck him as funny. A dead Malay; he had seen many dead Malays
without any emotion; and now he felt inclined to weep, but it was
over the fate of a white man he knew; a man that fell over a deep
precipice and did not die. He seemed somehow to himself to be
standing on one side, a little way off, looking at a certain
Almayer who was in great trouble. Poor, poor fellow! Why doesn't
he cut his throat? He wished to encourage him; he was very
anxious to see him lying dead over that other corpse. Why does
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: physical science, valuable materials, books, machinery, etc., from
Paris, and was on the highroad to ruin in search of the Philosopher's
Stone. She ought, so her kind friends added, to think of her children,
and her own future; it was criminal not to use her influence to draw
Monsieur Claes from the fatal path on which he had entered.
Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady,
silenced these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of
her apparent confidence, and she resolved to break through her present
system of silence and resignation. She brought about one of those
little scenes in which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less
timid at such a moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his
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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 A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: prospects to unite one humble life with another, one form of toil to
another, and to bring at any rate a man's arm and a calm affection,
pale-hued like the flowers in the window, to uphold this home.
Vague hope certainly gave life to the mother's dim, gray eyes. Every
morning, after the most frugal breakfast, she took up her pillow,
though chiefly for the look of the thing, for she would lay her
spectacles on a little mahogany worktable as old as herself, and look
out of the window from about half-past eight till ten at the regular
passers in the street; she caught their glances, remarked on their
gait, their dress, their countenance, and almost seemed to be offering
her daughter, her gossiping eyes so evidently tried to attract some
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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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: unawares, content meanwhile to parry some of the reproaches which he now
and again cast at me with an earnestness real or feigned.
We had made now considerable progress, and were come to a space of sand
and cabins and intersecting railroad tracks, where freight cars and
locomotives stood, and negroes of all shapes, but of one lowering and
ragged appearance, lounged and stared.
"There used to be a murder here about once a day," said John, "before the
dispensary system. Now, it is about once a week."
"That law is of benefit, then?" I inquired.
"To those who drink the whiskey, possibly; certainly to those who sell
it!" And he condensed for me the long story of the state dispensary,
which in brief appeared to be that South Carolina had gone into the
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