| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: manufacture of bays, as above, and for very little else, except I
shall make the ladies laugh at the famous old story of the Flitch
of Bacon at Dunmow, which is this:
One Robert Fitzwalter, a powerful baron in this county in the time
of Henry III., on some merry occasion, which is not preserved in
the rest of the story, instituted a custom in the priory here: That
whatever married man did not repent of his being married, or
quarrel or differ and dispute with his wife within a year and a day
after his marriage, and would swear to the truth of it, kneeling
upon two hard pointed stones in the churchyard, which stones he
caused to be set up in the Priory churchyard for that purpose, the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: "Now you must go; I have my work to finish."
The younger woman put her arms round her. "Oh, you are so good and
beautiful!"
The silk dress and the fur cloak rustled out of the room.
The woman who was left alone walked up and down, at last faster and faster,
till the drops stood on her forehead. After a time she went up to the
table; there was written illegibly in a man's hand on a fragment of
manuscript paper: "Can I come to see you this afternoon?" Near it was a
closed and addressed envelope. She opened it. In it were written the
words: "Yes, please, come."
She tore it across and wrote the words: "No, I shall not be at liberty."
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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 She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: HARDCASTLE. But you know if your son, when of age, refuses to marry
his cousin, her whole fortune is then at her own disposal.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Ay, but he's not of age, and she has not thought
proper to wait for his refusal.
Enter HASTINGS and MISS NEVILLE.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. (Aside.) What, returned so soon! I begin not to
like it.
HASTINGS. (To HARDCASTLE.) For my late attempt to fly off with your
niece let my present confusion be my punishment. We are now come back,
to appeal from your justice to your humanity. By her father's consent,
I first paid her my addresses, and our passions were first founded in
She Stoops to Conquer |
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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I had not seen it in Harley Street--I had not seen it anywhere.
The place, moreover, in the strangest way in the world, had,
on the instant, and by the very fact of its appearance,
become a solitude. To me at least, making my statement
here with a deliberation with which I have never made it,
the whole feeling of the moment returns. It was as if,
while I took in--what I did take in--all the rest of the scene
had been stricken with death. I can hear again, as I write,
the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped.
The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly
hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no
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