| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: greatest distress, or I should be ashamed to trouble you. I am very
miserable about Sir James Martin, and have no other way in the world of
helping myself but by writing to you, for I am forbidden even speaking to
my uncle and aunt on the subject; and this being the case, I am afraid my
applying to you will appear no better than equivocation, and as if I
attended to the letter and not the spirit of mamma's commands. But if you
do not take my part and persuade her to break it off, I shall be half
distracted, for I cannot bear him. No human being but YOU could have any
chance of prevailing with her. If you will, therefore, have the unspeakably
great kindness of taking my part with her, and persuading her to send Sir
James away, I shall be more obliged to you than it is possible for me to
Lady Susan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: who carried two big wooden buckets, moving about among them.
Halfway between the barn and the house, the windmill wheezed
lazily. Following the path that ran around to the back porch,
Nils stopped to look through the screen door into the lamplit
kitchen. The kitchen was the largest room in the house; Nils
remembered that his older brothers used to give dances there when
he was a boy. Beside the stove stood a little girl with two
light yellow braids and a broad, flushed face, peering
anxiously into a frying pan. In the dining-room beyond, a large,
broad-shouldered woman was moving about the table. She walked
with an active, springy step. Her face was heavy and florid,
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: Chapeloud was so true a friend to me,' she said, 'that I cannot
consent to part with his picture.' As for me," added Troubert, "if it
were mine I would not yield it. My feelings to my late friend were so
faithful that I should feel my right to his portrait was above that of
others."
"Well, there's no need to quarrel over a bad picture." ("I care as
little about it as you do," thought she.) "Keep it, and I will have a
copy made of it. I take some credit to myself for having averted this
deplorable lawsuit; and I have gained, personally, the pleasure of
your acquaintance. I hear you have a great talent for whist. You will
forgive a woman for curiosity," she said, smiling. "If you will come
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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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: and in a tone of voice, somewhat between that of a man in amazement and one
in bodily pain.
One or two who had very nice ears, and could distinguish the expression and
mixture of the two tones as plainly as a third or a fifth, or any other
chord in musick--were the most puzzled and perplexed with it--the concord
was good in itself--but then 'twas quite out of the key, and no way
applicable to the subject started;--so that with all their knowledge, they
could not tell what in the world to make of it.
Others who knew nothing of musical expression, and merely lent their ears
to the plain import of the word, imagined that Phutatorius, who was
somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of
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