| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: "I don't change--I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it,
perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had
been with either child, you would clearly have understood.
The more I've watched and waited the more I've felt that if
there were nothing else to make it sure it would be made
so by the systematic silence of each. NEVER, by a slip
of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their
old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion.
Oh, yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may show
off to us there to their fill; but even while they pretend
to be lost in their fairytale they're steeped in their vision
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than
now. In some places, within my own remembrance, the pines would
scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and children who
were compelled to go this way to Lincoln alone and on foot did it
with fear, and often ran a good part of the distance. Though mainly
but a humble route to neighboring villages, or for the woodman's
team, it once amused the traveller more than now by its variety, and
lingered longer in his memory. Where now firm open fields stretch
from the village to the woods, it then ran through a maple swamp on
a foundation of logs, the remnants of which, doubtless, still
underlie the present dusty highway, from the Stratton, now the
Walden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: 'Now why don't you go for a walk through the wood, and look at the
daffs behind the keeper's cottage? They're the prettiest sight you'd
see in a day's march. And you could put some in your room; wild daffs
are always so cheerful-looking, aren't they?'
Connie took it in good part, even daffs for daffodils. Wild daffodils!
After all, one could not stew in one's own juice. The spring came
back...'Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet
approach of Ev'n or Morn.'
And the keeper, his thin, white body, like a lonely pistil of an
invisible flower! She had forgotten him in her unspeakable depression.
But now something roused...'Pale beyond porch and portal'...the thing
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: turned away. Behind me I found the rest of the pack, with a
newcomer added: a small black greyhound with pale agate-coloured
eyes. He was shivering a little, and his expression was more
timid than that of the others. I noticed that he kept a little
behind them. And still there was not a sound.
I stood there for fully five minutes, the circle about me--
waiting, as they seemed to be waiting. At last I went up to the
little golden-brown dog and stooped to pat him. As I did so, I
heard myself laugh. The little dog did not start, or growl, or
take his eyes from me--he simply slipped back about a yard, and
then paused and continued to look at me. "Oh, hang it!" I
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