| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: had foreseen) that the guilt of the servant carried with it that of
the masters. So the vital interest centred on all that concerned
Michu. His bearing was noble. He showed in his answers the sagacity
with which nature had endowed him; and the public, seeing him on his
mettle, recognized his superiority. And yet, strange to say, the more
they understood him the more certainty they felt that he was the
instigator of the outrage.
The witnesses for the defence, always less important in the eyes of a
jury and of the law than the witnesses for the prosecution, seemed to
testify as in duty bound, and were listened to with that allowance. In
the first place neither Marthe, nor Monsieur and Madame d'Hauteserre
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: the air, pretending a sudden interest in a Japanese lantern that
was about to catch fire.
But he had had a single distinct glimpse of her, definite,
precise, and this glimpse was enough. Hilma had changed. The
change was subtle, evanescent, hard to define, but not the less
unmistakable. The excitement, the enchanting delight, the
delicious disturbance of "the first ball," had produced its
result. Perhaps there had only been this lacking. It was hard
to say, but for that brief instant of time Annixter was looking
at Hilma, the woman. She was no longer the young girl upon whom
he might look down, to whom he might condescend, whose little,
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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 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: was to this effect. "I begin now to understand you all,
except Miss Price," said Miss Crawford, as she was
walking with the Mr. Bertrams. "Pray, is she out,
or is she not? I am puzzled. She dined at the Parsonage,
with the rest of you, which seemed like being _out_;
and yet she says so little, that I can hardly suppose
she _is_."
Edmund, to whom this was chiefly addressed, replied, "I believe
I know what you mean, but I will not undertake to answer
the question. My cousin is grown up. She has the age
and sense of a woman, but the outs and not outs are beyond me."
Mansfield Park |
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 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: rage, flung himself down with such force that he rebounded from the
mattress to the height of quite a foot.
"Dear me!" exclaimed the scared Nelson, and incontinently ran off
to hurry up the brandy and the laudanum, very angry that so little
alacrity was shown in relieving the tortures of his precious guest.
In the end he got these things himself.
Half an hour later he stood in the inner passage of the house,
surprised by faint, spasmodic sounds of a mysterious nature,
between laughter and sobs. He frowned; then went straight towards
his daughter's room and knocked at the door.
Freya, her glorious fair hair framing her white face and rippling
'Twixt Land & Sea |
