| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: MARY.
You terrify me, Tituba! Oh, save me
From those who make me pine and waste away!
Who are they? Tell me.
TITUBA.
That I do not know,
But you will see them. They will come to you.
MARY.
No, do not let them come! I cannot bear it!
I am too weak to bear it! I am dying.
Fails into a trance.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: eyes; while this in turn produced, in spite of deepened
astonishment, a blest snap of the strain I had been struggling
with. I wanted to embrace them both, and while the opening bars of
another scene rose from the orchestra I almost did embrace Dawling,
whose first emotion on beholding me had visibly and ever so oddly
been a consciousness of guilt. I had caught him somehow in the
act, though that was as yet all I knew; but by the time we sank
noiselessly into our chairs again--for the music was supreme,
Wagner passed first--my demonstration ought pretty well to have
given him the limit of the criticism he had to fear. I myself
indeed, while the opera blazed, was only too afraid he might divine
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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 Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: the count's mind and quiet those fatal nervous susceptibilities, the
excitements of which were killing him. Nothing was ever harder than to
make him play that game, which, however, he had a great desire to
play. Like a pretty woman, he always required to be coaxed, entreated,
forced, so that he might not seem the obliged person. If by chance,
being interested in the conversation, I forgot to propose it, he grew
sulky, bitter, insulting, and spoiled the talk by contradicting
everything. If, warned by his ill-humor, I suggested a game, he would
dally and demur. "In the first place, it is too late," he would say;
"besides, I don't care for it." Then followed a series of affectations
like those of women, which often leave you in ignorance of their real
The Lily of the Valley |
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 Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: friend.
"He received me with great politeness (my uncle had already
prepossessed him in my favour), and listened, with interest, to my
explanation of the motives which had induced me to fly from home,
and skulk in obscurity, with all the timidity of fear that ought
only to be the companion of guilt. He lamented, with rather more
gallantry than, in my situation, I thought delicate, that such a
woman should be thrown away on a man insensible to the charms of
beauty or grace. He seemed at a loss what to advise me to do, to
evade my husband's search, without hastening to my uncle, whom, he
hesitating said, I might not find alive. He uttered this intelligence
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