| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: generosity. While pausing in this half-stupefied state
the conversation of Lucetta with the other ladies
reached his ears; and he distinctly heard her deny him--deny
that he had assisted Donald, that he was anything more than
a common journeyman.
He moved on homeward, and met Jopp in the archway to the
Bull Stake. "So you've had a snub," said Jopp.
"And what if I have?" answered Henchard sternly.
"Why, I've had one too, so we are both under the same cold
shade." He briefly related his attempt to win Lucetta's
intercession.
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: elegant, intelligent, and modest man, and a capital elocutionist,
and who taught Olga Ivanovna to recite; there was a singer from
the opera, a good-natured, fat man who assured Olga Ivanovna,
with a sigh, that she was ruining herself, that if she would take
herself in hand and not be lazy she might make a remarkable
singer; then there were several artists, and chief among them
Ryabovsky, a very handsome, fair young man of five-and-twenty who
painted genre pieces, animal studies, and landscapes, was
successful at exhibitions, and had sold his last picture for five
hundred roubles. He touched up Olga Ivanovna's sketches, and used
to say she might do something. Then a violoncellist, whose
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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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: that clung about the man himself - the thing was clean beyond me. And
I was still being wheedled and preached to, and still being marched to
and fro, three steps and a turn, in that small chamber, and had
already, by some very short replies, highly incensed, although not
finally discouraged, my beggar, when Prestongrange appeared in the
doorway and bade me eagerly into his big chamber.
"I have a moment's engagements," said he; "and that you may not sit
empty-handed I am going to present you to my three braw daughters, of
whom perhaps you may have heard, for I think they are more famous than
papa. This way."
He led me into another long room above, where a dry old lady sat at a
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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 Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: embedded in an impalpable dust that rose in clouds about him
at every step. The sun beat down mercilessly out of a cloud-
less sky.
For a day Tarzan toiled across this now hateful land and
at the going down of the sun the distant mountains to the west
seemed no nearer than at morn. Never a sign of living thing
had the ape-man seen, other than Ska, that bird of ill omen,
that had followed him tirelessly since he had entered this
parched waste.
No littlest beetle that he might eat had given evidence that
life of any sort existed here, and it was a hungry and thirsty
Tarzan the Untamed |
