| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight
line of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge,
with a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor
half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of the sky.
Corresponding in their insignificance to the islets of the sea,
two small clumps of trees, one on each side of the only fault
in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river Meinam
we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our
homeward journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger
and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda,
was the only thing on which the eye could rest from the vain
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: sly one. She asked for monsieur, and seemed much annoyed when I told
her he was out; then she gave me a letter for madame, and here it is."
Fevered with anxiety, Jules opened the letter; then he dropped into a
chair, exhausted. The letter was mere nonsense throughout, and needed
a key. It was virtually in cipher.
"Go away, Fouguereau." The porter left him. "It is a mystery deeper
than the sea below the plummet line! Ah! it must be love; love only is
so sagacious, so inventive as this. Ah! I shall kill her."
At this moment an idea flashed through his brain with such force that
he felt almost physically illuminated by it. In the days of his
toilsome poverty before his marriage, Jules had made for himself a
Ferragus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: regularity!" St. George went on.
"And with a splendour!" added the polite General, while Paul noted
how little the author of "Shadowmere" minded, as he phrased it to
himself, when addressed as a celebrated story-teller. The young
man had an idea HE should never get used to that; it would always
make him uncomfortable - from the suspicion that people would think
they had to - and he would want to prevent it. Evidently his great
colleague had toughened and hardened - had made himself a surface.
The group of men had finished their cigars and taken up their
bedroom candlesticks; but before they all passed out Lord
Watermouth invited the pair of guests who had been so absorbed
|
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 The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: These were chiefly of a sprightly nature, and when Julia
laughed over them he felt that she was very near to him indeed.
Thus they saw Paris together--where Thorpe did relinquish
some of the multiplied glories of the Louvre to sit
in front of a cafe by the Opera House and see the funny
people go past--and thence, by Bruges and Antwerp,
to Holland, where nobody could have imagined there were
as many pictures as Thorpe saw with his own weary eyes.
There were wonderful old buildings at Lubeck for Julia's
eyes to glisten over, and pictures at Berlin, Dresden,
and Dusseldorf for Alfred.
The Market-Place |
