| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: wing. But Dominic had his bearings. His voice came to me from
forward, in a just audible cry:
"Now, signorino!"
I bore on the tiller, as instructed before. Again I heard him
faintly, and then I had only to hold her straight. No ship ran so
joyously to her death before. She rose and fell, as if floating in
space, and darted forward, whizzing like an arrow. Dominic,
stooping under the foot of the foresail, reappeared, and stood
steadying himself against the mast, with a raised forefinger in an
attitude of expectant attention. A second before the shock his arm
fell down by his side. At that I set my teeth. And then -
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: outcome of all this is an axiom which I have never seen anywhere in
print----"
"And that is?"
"The debtor is more than a match for the creditor."
"Oh!" said Blondet. "For my own part, all that we have been saying
seems to me to be a paraphrase of the epigram in which Montesquieu
summed up l'Espirit des Lois."
"What?" said Finot.
"Laws are like spiders' webs; the big flies get through, while the
little ones are caught."
"Then, what are you for?" asked Finot.
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: even the liveliest of these occasions. They were occasions of
discussion, none the less, and Strether had never in his life
heard so many opinions on so many subjects. There were opinions at
Woollett, but only on three or four. The differences were there to
match; if they were doubtless deep, though few, they were quiet--
they were, as might be said, almost as shy as if people had been
ashamed of them. People showed little diffidence about such
things, on the other hand, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and were
so far from being ashamed of them--or indeed of anything else--
that they often seemed to have invented them to avert those
agreements that destroy the taste of talk. No one had ever done that
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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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: kept your soul alive. Such a man may be generous; he may be honest
in something more than the commercial sense; he may love his
friends with an elective, personal sympathy, and not accept them as
an adjunct of the station to which he has been called. He may be a
man, in short, acting on his own instincts, keeping in his own
shape that God made him in; and not a mere crank in the social
engine-house, welded on principles that he does not understand, and
for purposes that he does not care for.
For will any one dare to tell me that business is more entertaining
than fooling among boats? He must have never seen a boat, or never
seen an office, who says so. And for certain the one is a great
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