| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: hides in a hole. It feels sad.
This is a man with a gun.
He sees something sitting on a
bench. He thinks it is a very funny
bird!
He comes creeping up behind the
trees.
And then he shoots--BANG!
This is what happens--
But this is all he finds on the bench
when he rushes up with his gun.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: sulkily down again, to watch for a fresh bait. At which Jack said
very softly, "In manus tuas, Domine!" and turning his eyes in
board, had no lust to look at sharks any more.
So having got through the reef, in they ran with a fair breeze, the
caravel not being now a musket-shot off. Cary laid her aboard
before the Spaniards had time to get to their ordnance; and
standing up in the stern-sheets, shouted to them to yield. The
captain asked boldly enough, in whose name? "In the name of common
sense, ye dogs," cries Will; "do you not see that you are but fifty
strong to our twenty?" Whereon up the side he scrambled, and the
captain fired a pistol at him. Cary knocked him over, unwilling to
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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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: while, in its swifter and livelier passages there appeared a
channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. Letting the
eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the
reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the
forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of
tree-trunks and underbush, and here and there a huge rock covered
over with gray lichens. All these giant trees and boulders of
granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this
small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing
loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old
forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth
The Scarlet Letter |
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 Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: with precious stuffs, embroidered line and jewels. With an instinct
given by paternity, the old man always chose his presents among the
works of that fantastic order called arabesque, which, speaking
neither to the soul nor the senses, addresses the mind only by its
creations of pure fantasy.
Thus--singular to say!--the life which the hatred of a father had
imposed on Etienne d'Herouville, paternal love had induced Beauvouloir
to impose on Gabrielle. In both these children the soul was killing
the body; and without an absolute solitude, ordained by cruelty for
one and procured by science for the other, each was likely to succumb,
--he to terror, she beneath the weight of a too keen emotion of love.
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