| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: power? Why you cannot even dance and sing, till now and then, at
night, perhaps, when you ought to lie safe in bed, but when the
weak brain, after receiving the day's nourishment, has roused
itself a second time into a false excitement of gaslight pleasure.
What there is left of it is all going into that foolish book,
which the womanly element in you, still healthy and alive,
delights in; because it places you in fancy in situations in which
you will never stand, and inspires you with emotions, some of
which, it may be, you had better never feel. Poor Nausicaa--old,
some men think, before you have been ever young.
And now they are going to "develop" you; and let you have your
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: "I'm so delighted; my father told me. How kind of you to come!"
She struck him as so fresh and brave, while his eyes moved over
her, that he said to himself irresistibly: "Why to him, why not to
youth, to strength, to ambition, to a future? Why, in her rich
young force, to failure, to abdication to superannuation?" In his
thought at that sharp moment he blasphemed even against all that
had been left of his faith in the peccable Master. "I'm so sorry I
missed you," she went on. "My father told me. How charming of you
to have come so soon!"
"Does that surprise you?" Paul Overt asked.
"The first day? No, from you - nothing that's nice." She was
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: at his presumption: there was grossness in his choice of the most
ordinary words, and what business had he to talk of her lips?
She was not a woman to be spoken of as other women were. Will could
not say just what he thought, but he became irritable. And yet,
when after some resistance he had consented to take the Casaubons
to his friend's studio, he had been allured by the gratification
of his pride in being the person who could grant Naumann such an
opportunity of studying her loveliness--or rather her divineness,
for the ordinary phrases which might apply to mere bodily prettiness
were not applicable to her. (Certainly all Tipton and its neighborhood,
as well as Dorothea herself, would have been surprised at her beauty
Middlemarch |
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 Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: wood, building a cook-fire and preparing the evening meal.
It was while they were thus engaged that Brady's attention was
attracted by the dismal flapping of huge wings. He glanced up,
expecting to see one of the great flying reptiles of a bygone
age, his rifle ready in his hand. Brady was a brave man. He had
groped his way up narrow tenement stairs and taken an armed
maniac from a dark room without turning a hair; but now as he
looked up, he went white and staggered back.
"Gawd!" he almost screamed. "What is it?"
Attracted by Brady's cry the others seized their rifles as they
followed his wide-eyed, frozen gaze, nor was there one of them
Out of Time's Abyss |
