| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: Who hast no cares
Only to set snares,
Who liv'st all alone,
Close to the bone
And where life is sweetest
Constantly eatest.
When the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct to travel,
I can get enough gravel
On the Old Marlborough Road.
Nobody repairs it,
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: myself from head to foot, all struck me--like the extraordinary
charm of my small charge--as so many things thrown in.
It was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I
should get on with Mrs. Grose in a relation over which,
on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather brooded.
The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have
made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being
so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she
was so glad--stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman--
as to be positively on her guard against showing it too much.
I wondered even then a little why she should wish not to show it,
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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 Phaedrus by Plato: the dialogue before he begins to write. He fastens or weaves together the
frame of his discourse loosely and imperfectly, and which is the warp and
which is the woof cannot always be determined.
The subjects of the Phaedrus (exclusive of the short introductory passage
about mythology which is suggested by the local tradition) are first the
false or conventional art of rhetoric; secondly, love or the inspiration of
beauty and knowledge, which is described as madness; thirdly, dialectic or
the art of composition and division; fourthly, the true rhetoric, which is
based upon dialectic, and is neither the art of persuasion nor knowledge of
the truth alone, but the art of persuasion founded on knowledge of truth
and knowledge of character; fifthly, the superiority of the spoken over the
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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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: the councils of the emperor and his nobles. When the two monarchs
had feasted together, Montezuma spoke to Neza of the matter of the
omens and of the coming of the Teules, asking him to lighten the
darkness by his wisdom. Then Neza pulled his long grey beard and
answered that heavy as the heart of Montezuma might be, it must
grow still heavier before the end.
'See, Lord,' he said, 'I am so sure that the days of our empire are
numbered, that I will play you at dice for my kingdoms which you
and your forefathers have ever desired to win.'
'For what wager?' asked Montezuma.
'I will play you thus,' answered Neza. 'You shall stake three
Montezuma's Daughter |
