| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: theory to justify the system of women's vassalage and thralldom. If
self-denial be so noble, so sublime, what, pray, of my joy, sheltered
by the gold-and-white canopy of the church, and witnessed by the hand
and seal of the most sour-faced of mayors? Is it a thing out of
nature?
For the honor of the law, for her own sake, but most of all to make my
happiness complete, I long to see my Renee content. Oh! tell me that
you see a dawn of love for this Louis who adores you! Tell me that the
solemn, symbolic torch of Hymen has not alone served to lighten your
darkness, but that love, the glorious sun of our hearts, pours his
rays on you. I come back always, you see, to this midday blaze, which
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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 Jungle by Upton Sinclair: have had him do, what she would ask of him at this moment, if she
could speak to him. It was a terrible thing that she should have
died as she had; but the life had been too hard for her, and she
had to go. It was terrible that they were not able to bury her,
that he could not even have a day to mourn her--but so it was.
Their fate was pressing; they had not a cent, and the children would
perish--some money must be had. Could he not be a man for Ona's sake,
and pull himself together? In a little while they would be out of
danger--now that they had given up the house they could live more
cheaply, and with all the children working they could get along,
if only he would not go to pieces. So Elzbieta went on, with feverish
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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 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: passing it at any rate. Tom got down on his breast
and reached as far down as he could. No bottom.
They must stay there and wait until the searchers came.
They listened; evidently the distant shoutings were
growing more distant! a moment or two more and they
had gone altogether. The heart-sinking misery of
it! Tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of
no use. He talked hopefully to Becky; but an age
of anxious waiting passed and no sounds came again.
The children groped their way back to the spring.
The weary time dragged on; they slept again, and
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: Here he cast about for a comfortable seat, lighted on a big
boulder under a birch by the trackside, sate down upon it with a
very long, serious upper lip, and the sun now shining in upon us
between two peaks, put his pocket-handkerchief over his cocked
hat to shelter him. There, then, with uplifted forefinger, he
first put me on my guard against a considerable number of
heresies, to which I had no temptation, and urged upon me to be
instant in my prayers and reading of the Bible. That done, he
drew a picture of the great house that I was bound to, and how I
should conduct myself with its inhabitants.
"Be soople, Davie, in things immaterial," said he. "Bear ye this
Kidnapped |
