| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: wears one a month, with two soft collars."
"And then," whispered Fraulein Lisa, "he said to me, 'Indeed you please me.
I shall, perhaps, write to your mother.'"
Small wonder that we were a little violently excited, a little
expostulatory.
Suddenly the door opened and admitted the Baron.
Followed a complete and deathlike silence.
He came in slowly, hesitated, took up a toothpick from a dish on the top of
the piano, and went out again.
When the door was closed we raised a triumphant cry! It was the first time
he had ever been known to enter the salon. Who could tell what the Future
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: Why, the whole world, surely the up-on-the mountain-world, seemed
full of Only-Just-Ladies.
Not just a Lady here and there, coming to visit with hats on, to
talk a little to the Sisters, to look at the little girls with blue
checked aprons on. But here they were coming and going all the
time, moving about, and living in the cabins, walking everywhere
with or without hats on, standing on the gray cliffs, and looking
down--maybe into the heart of a worldwide violet there, off the edge
of the cliff, such as Bessie Bell saw or fancied she saw.
So many Ladies.
Bessie Bell leaned against the little fluted post of the gallery to
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: over to-night, as it is getting late in the afternoon; but I
shall be glad if you can leave early in the morning.
Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week,
Sue did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife
and husband, and she said she would leave as requested.
When the landlady had gone Sue looked out of the window again.
Finding that the rain had ceased she proposed to the boy that,
after putting the little ones to bed, they should go out and
search about for another place, and bespeak it for the morrow,
so as not to be so hard-driven then as they had been
that day.
Jude the Obscure |
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 Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: anything positively wrong with me. A certain lack of energy--
"
"Lack of balance," corrected the doctor. "You are wasting
energy upon internal friction. "But isn't that inevitable? No
machine is perfectly efficient. No man either. There is
always a waste. Waste of the type; waste of the individual
idiosyncrasy. This little car, for instance, isn't pulling as
she ought to pull--she never does. She's low in her class. So
with myself; there is a natural and necessary high rate of
energy waste. Moods of apathy and indolence are natural to
me. (Damn that omnibus! All over the road!)"
|
