| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: enough somehow."
"Have a good dinner, Nanon; my cousin will come down," said Eugenie.
"Something very extraordinary is going on, I am certain of it," said
Madame Grandet. "This is only the third time since our marriage that
your father has given a dinner."
*****
About four o'clock, just as Eugenie and her mother had finished
setting the table for six persons, and after the master of the house
had brought up a few bottles of the exquisite wine which provincials
cherish with true affection, Charles came down into the hall. The
young fellow was pale; his gestures, the expression of his face, his
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: LUCIUS TARQUINIUS (for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus),
after he had caused his own father-in-law, Servius Tullius, to be
cruelly murdered, and, contrary to the Roman laws and customs,
not requiring or staying for the people's suffrages, had
possessed himself of the kingdom, went, accompanied with his sons
and other noblemen of Rome, to besiege Ardea. During which siege
the principal men of the army meeting one evening at the tent of
Sextus Tarquinius, the king's son, in their discourses after
supper, every one commended the virtues of his own wife; among
whom Collatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife
Lucretia. In that pleasant humour they all posted to Rome; and
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: scholarship; and when he was only fourteen, his uncle James sent him
to the University of Paris. Those were hard times; and the youths,
or rather boys, who meant to become scholars, had a cruel life of
it, cast desperately out on the wide world to beg and starve, either
into self-restraint and success, or into ruin of body and soul. And
a cruel life George had. Within two years he was down in a severe
illness, his uncle dead, his supplies stopped; and the boy of
sixteen got home, he does not tell how. Then he tried soldiering;
and was with Albany's French Auxiliaries at the ineffectual attack
on Wark Castle. Marching back through deep snow, he got a fresh
illness, which kept him in bed all winter. Then he and his brother
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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 The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: uncle of his had given to little Gluck, and which he was very fond
of and would not have parted with for the world, though he never
drank anything out of it but milk and water. The mug was a very odd
mug to look at. The handle was formed of two wreaths of flowing
golden hair, so finely spun that it looked more like silk than
metal, and these wreaths descended into and mixed with a beard and
whiskers of the same exquisite workmanship, which surrounded and
decorated a very fierce little face, of the reddest gold imaginable,
right in the front of the mug, with a pair of eyes in it which
seemed to command its whole circumference. It was impossible to
drink out of the mug without being subjected to an intense gaze out
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