| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: He waved them round his head. "All be quiet! All listen!" And he waited
for them. "Look here, Lottie." He turned up a card. "It's got two spots
on it--see? Now, if you put that card in the middle and somebody else has
one with two spots as well, you say 'Hee-haw,' and the card's yours."
"Mine?" Lottie was round-eyed. "To keep?"
"No, silly. Just for the game, see? Just while we're playing." The bull
was very cross with her.
"Oh, Lottie, you are a little silly," said the proud rooster.
Lottie looked at both of them. Then she hung her head; her lip quivered.
"I don't want to play," she whispered. The others glanced at one another
like conspirators. All of them knew what that meant. She would go away
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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 Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: simple, indeed, but much contrasting--a broad lawn in the
fashionable suburb of a fast city, the evergreen leaves shining in
the evening sun, amid which bounding girls, gracefully clad in
artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, and white, were
playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the pride of
life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from the
open windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls--and this was a
fact which Grace Melbury's delicate femininity could not lose
sight of--whose parents Giles would have addressed with a
deferential Sir or Madam. Beside this visioned scene the homely
farmsteads did not quite hold their own from her present twenty-
The Woodlanders |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: where he pulled up.
"I don't know where I am," said the countess looking about her,--"I,
who know the forest as well as you do."
"We are in the heart of it," he replied. "Two gendarmes are after us,
but we are quite safe."
The picturesque spot to which the bailiff had guided Laurence was
destined to be so fatal to the principal personages of this drama, and
to Michu himself, that it becomes our duty, as an historian, to
describe it. The scene became, as we shall see hereafter, one of noted
interest in the judiciary annals of the Empire.
The forest of Nodesme belonged to the monastery of Notre-Dame. 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 Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: That was all he said. The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest. The
roll was a small green pocket-book containing one or two gold
pieces, and a check for an incredible amount, as it seemed to
the poor puddler. He laid it down, hiding his face again in his
hands.
"Hugh, don't be angry wud me! It's only poor Deb,--hur knows?"
He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his.
"Angry? God help me, no! Let me sleep. I am tired."
He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with
pain and weariness. She brought some old rags to cover him.
It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke. I tell God's
Life in the Iron-Mills |
