| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: wear you in my bosom, lest my jewel I should tyne."
He said this as he helped me to alight from the carriage, and while
he afterwards lifted out Adele, I entered the house, and made good
my retreat upstairs.
He duly summoned me to his presence in the evening. I had prepared
an occupation for him; for I was determined not to spend the whole
time in a tete-e-tete conversation. I remembered his fine voice; I
knew he liked to sing--good singers generally do. I was no vocalist
myself, and, in his fastidious judgment, no musician, either; but I
delighted in listening when the performance was good. No sooner had
twilight, that hour of romance, began to lower her blue and starry
Jane Eyre |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: her features.
They were fair: his were dark. But this was an unimportant
preliminary. In sleep there come to the surface buried
genealogical facts, ancestral curves, dead men's traits,
which the mobility of daytime animation screens and
overwhelms. In the present statuesque repose of the young
girl's countenance Richard Newson's was unmistakably
reflected. He could not endure the sight of her, and
hastened away.
Misery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it.
His wife was dead, and the first impulse for revenge died
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: The Marshal, without looking at Hector, rang the bell for his
factotum, the old soldier who had served him for thirty years.
"Beau-Pied," said he, "fetch my notary, and Count Steinbock, and my
niece Hortense, and the stockbroker to the Treasury. It is now half-
past ten; they must all be here by twelve. Take hackney cabs--and go
faster than /that/!" he added, a republican allusion which in past
days had been often on his lips. And he put on the scowl that had
brought his soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom on the
heaths of Brittany in 1799. (See /Les Chouans/.)
"You shall be obeyed, Marechal," said Beau-Pied, with a military
salute.
|
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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: getting off some funny stuff."
"Go ahead," answered Daisy genially, "and if you want to take down any
addresses here's my little gold pencil." . . . she looked around after
a moment and told me the girl was "common but pretty," and I knew that
except for the half-hour she'd been alone with Gatsby she wasn't having
a good time.
We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault--Gatsby had
been called to the phone, and I'd enjoyed these same people only two
weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now.
"How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?"
The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my
The Great Gatsby |
