| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: It is not on account of his chivalry that I love him--no, it is not that.
He told on me, but I do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex,
I think, and he did not make his sex. Of course I would not have
told on him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity
of sex, too, and I do not take credit for it, for I did not make
my sex.
Then why is it that I love him? MERELY BECAUSE HE IS MASCULINE,
I think.
At bottom he is good, and I love him for that, but I could love
him without it. If he should beat me and abuse me, I should go
on loving him. I know it. It is a matter of sex, I think.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: ultimately kissing the dead pasteboard with all the passionateness,
and more than all the devotion, of a young man of eighteen.
The schoolmaster's was an unhealthy-looking, old-fashioned face,
rendered more old-fashioned by his style of shaving.
A certain gentlemanliness had been imparted to it by nature,
suggesting an inherent wish to do rightly by all.
His speech was a little slow, but his tones were sincere enough
to make his hesitation no defect. His greying hair was curly,
and radiated from a point in the middle of his crown.
There were four lines across his forehead, and he only wore
spectacles when reading at night. It was almost certainly
Jude the Obscure |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: awful. There was neither youth nor age, but beauty, mature and
majestic as that of a marble Demeter.
"Do you believe in that which you seek?" she asked in her foreign,
melodious, melancholy accents.
"I have no belief," was my answer. "True science has none. True
science questions all things, takes nothing upon credit. It knows
but three states of the mind--denial, conviction, and that vast
interval between the two which is not belief but suspense of
judgment."
The woman let fall her veil, moved from me, and seated herself on a
crag above that cleft between mountain and creek, to which, when I
|
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 Pupil by Henry James: perfectly. I haven't a penny in the world and, occupied as you see
me with Morgan, am unable to earn money."
Mrs. Moreen tapped her undressed arm with her folded bank-note.
"Can't you write articles? Can't you translate as I do?"
"I don't know about translating; it's wretchedly paid."
"I'm glad to earn what I can," said Mrs. Moreen with prodigious
virtue.
"You ought to tell me who you do it for." Pemberton paused a
moment, and she said nothing; so he added: "I've tried to turn off
some little sketches, but the magazines won't have them - they're
declined with thanks."
|
