| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: infinitely relieved by her low precipitate explanation, she looked
with eyes that reflected all its splendour at the magnificence of
their altar.
"They're here for you," Stransom said, "they're present to-night as
they've never been. They speak for you - don't you see? - in a
passion of light; they sing out like a choir of angels. Don't you
hear what they say? - they offer the very thing you asked of me."
"Don't talk of it - don't think of it; forget it!" She spoke in
hushed supplication, and while the alarm deepened in her eyes she
disengaged one of her hands and passed an arm round him to support
him better, to help him to sink into a seat.
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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 Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: prison until they shall conform themselves accordingly.
The Examiner's Office.
'That these examiners he sworn by the aldermen to inquire and learn
from time to time what houses in every parish be visited, and what
persons be sick, and of what diseases, as near as they can inform
themselves; and upon doubt in that case, to command restraint of
access until it appear what the disease shall prove. And if they find
any person sick of the infection, to give order to the constable that the
house be shut up; and if the constable shall be found remiss or
negligent, to give present notice thereof to the alderman of the ward.
Watchmen.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: they played hocus pocus? He was a very civil, kind
man, though he did speak like the Hessians; he lifted
up his eyes and said, "They play hocus pocus tricks
enough there, Got knows, mine friend."
JENNY
Well--
JONATHAN
So I went right in, and they shewed me away, clean
up to the garret, just like meeting-house gallery.
And so I saw a bower of topping folks, all sitting
round in little cabbins, "just like father's corn-cribs";
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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 A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: ocean, the waves of which were breaking on the reef below, I surveyed
my future, filling it with books as an engineer or builder traces on
vacant ground a palace or a fort.
The sea was beautiful; I had just dressed after bathing; and I awaited
Pauline, who was also bathing, in a granite cove floored with fine
sand, the most coquettish bath-room that Nature ever devised for her
water-fairies. The spot was at the farther end of Croisic, a dainty
little peninsula in Brittany; it was far from the port, and so
inaccessible that the coast-guard seldom thought it necessary to pass
that way. To float in ether after floating on the wave!--ah! who would
not have floated on the future as I did! Why was I thinking? Whence
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