| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: saw only the white face of her boy. A sickening sense of utter
loneliness swept over her. She rose and moved away.
During all this time Cully was watching the dying embers, and when
all danger was over,--only the small stable with its two horses
had been destroyed,--he led the Big Gray back to the pump, washed
his head, sponging his eyes and mouth, and housed him in the big
stable. Then he vanished.
Immediately on leaving the Big Gray, Cully had dodged behind the
stable, run rapidly up the hill, keeping close to the fence, and
had come out behind a group of scattering spectators. There he
began a series of complicated manoeuvres, mostly on his toes,
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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 Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: as if he was going up the chimneys, and not Tom. And Grimes
listened, and said every now and then, under his voice, "You'll
mind that, you little beggar?" and Tom did mind, all at least that
he could. And then the housekeeper turned them into a grand room,
all covered up in sheets of brown paper, and bade them begin, in a
lofty and tremendous voice; and so after a whimper or two, and a
kick from his master, into the grate Tom went, and up the chimney,
while a housemaid stayed in the room to watch the furniture; to
whom Mr. Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous compliments, but
met with very slight encouragement in return.
How many chimneys Tom swept I cannot say; but he swept so many that
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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 Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: wishing her if I well-wish him?'
The bowed form went on, passed through the wicket, and was
enveloped by the shadows of the field.
Stephen had heard that Mrs. Jethway, since the death of her son,
had become a crazed, forlorn woman; and bestowing a pitying
thought upon her, he dismissed her fancied wrongs from his mind,
but not her condemnation of Elfride's faithlessness. That entered
into and mingled with the sensations his new experience had
begotten. The tale told by the little scene he had witnessed ran
parallel with the unhappy woman's opinion, which, however baseless
it might have been antecedently, had become true enough as
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
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 Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: "Pooh!" cried Malaga. "I will wager my cabinet-maker's invoice (the
fellow is dunning me) that the little toad was too many for Maxime."
"I bet on Maxime," said Cardot. "Nobody ever caught him napping."
Desroches drank off a glass that Malaga handed to him.
"Mlle. Chocardelle's reading-room," he continued, after a pause, "was
in the Rue Coquenard, just a step or two from the Rue Pigalle where
Maxime was living. The said Mlle. Chocardelle lived at the back on the
garden side of the house, beyond a big dark place where the books were
kept. Antonia left her aunt to look after the business--"
"Had she an aunt even then?" exclaimed Malaga. "Hang it all, Maxime
did things handsomely."
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