| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: some stupefying drug which more nearly caused the death of the
patient than of the odious reptile that possessed him. When
Roderick Elliston regained entire sensibility, it was to find his
misfortune the town talk--the more than nine days' wonder and
horror--while, at his bosom, he felt the sickening motion of a
thing alive, and the gnawing of that restless fang which seemed
to gratify at once a physical appetite and a fiendish spite.
He summoned the old black servant, who had been bred up in his
father's house, and was a middle-aged man while Roderick lay in
his cradle.
"Scipio!" he began; and then paused, with his arms folded over
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: CXVI
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
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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 A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: her hit, and hence not quite disposed to forgive his notes. 'You
alluded to me in that entry as if I were such a child, too.
Everybody does that. I cannot understand it. I am quite a woman,
you know. How old do you think I am?'
'How old? Why, seventeen, I should say. All girls are seventeen.'
'You are wrong. I am nearly nineteen. Which class of women do
you like best, those who seem younger, or those who seem older
than they are?'
'Off-hand I should be inclined to say those who seem older.'
So it was not Elfride's class.
'But it is well known,' she said eagerly, and there was something
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: never looks desolate when man has not yet laid his hand upon her breast;
she is only lonely. But when man has been, and has passed away, then
she looks desolate.
"Well, I passed into the kraal, and went up to the principal hut. In
front of the hut was something with an old sheep-skin kaross thrown over
it. I stooped down and drew off the rug, and then shrank back amazed,
for under it was the body of a young woman recently dead. For a moment
I thought of turning back, but my curiosity overcame me; so going past
the dead woman, I went down on my hands and knees and crept into the
hut. It was so dark that I could not see anything, though I could smell
a great deal, so I lit a match. It was a 'tandstickor' match, and burnt
Long Odds |
