| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: was filled with anger at her blindness, and then at her
disastrous attempt to see. Why had she forced the truth out
of Darrow? If only she had held her tongue nothing need ever
have been known. Sophy Viner would have broken her
engagement, Owen would have been sent around the world, and
her own dream would have been unshattered. But she had
probed, insisted, cross-examined, not rested till she had
dragged the secret to the light. She was one of the luckless
women who always have the wrong audacities, and who always
know it...
Was it she, Anna Leath, who was picturing herself to herself
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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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: Besides, he was fondling his chimera,--a desire already twelve years
old, the desire of a priest, a desire formed anew every evening and
now, apparently, very near accomplishment; in short, he had wrapped
himself so completely in the fur cape of a canon that he did not feel
the inclemency of the weather. During the evening several of the
company who habitually gathered at Madame de Listomere's had almost
guaranteed to him his nomination to the office of canon (then vacant
in the metropolitan Chapter of Saint-Gatien), assuring him that no one
deserved such promotion as he, whose rights, long overlooked, were
indisputable.
If he had lost the rubber, if he had heard that his rival, the Abbe
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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 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: My husband liues that Tibalt would haue slaine,
And Tibalt dead that would haue slaine my husband:
All this is comfort, wherefore weepe I then?
Some words there was worser then Tybalts death
That murdered me, I would forget it feine,
But oh, it presses to my memory,
Like damned guilty deedes to sinners minds,
Tybalt is dead and Romeo banished:
That banished, that one word banished,
Hath slaine ten thousand Tibalts: Tibalts death
Was woe inough if it had ended there:
Romeo and Juliet |
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 An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: seen you since Berlin!
MRS. CHEVELEY. Not since Berlin, Vicomte. Five years ago!
VICOMTE DE NANJAC. And you are younger and more beautiful than ever.
How do you manage it?
MRS. CHEVELEY. By making it a rule only to talk to perfectly
charming people like yourself.
VICOMTE DE NANJAC. Ah! you flatter me. You butter me, as they say
here.
MRS. CHEVELEY. Do they say that here? How dreadful of them!
VICOMTE DE NANJAC. Yes, they have a wonderful language. It should
be more widely known.
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