| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: Then and then only she'll be safe. How will any one ever look at
her if she makes herself a fright? How could she ever have got
engaged if she had made herself a fright from the first? It's no
use to insist that with her beauty she can never BE a fright. She
said to me this morning, poor girl, the most characteristic, the
most harrowing things. 'My face is all I have--and SUCH a face! I
knew from the first I could do anything with it. But I needed it
all--I need it still, every exquisite inch of it. It isn't as if I
had a figure or anything else. Oh if God had only given me a
figure too, I don't say! Yes, with a figure, a really good one,
like Fanny Floyd-Taylor's, who's hideous, I'd have risked plain
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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 Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: trumpet very far away, calling me to come. And as I listened
the flower faded into the dimness of the hills."
"Did you follow it," asked Ruamie, "and did you go away from
your home? How could you do that?"
"Yes, Ruamie, when the time came, as soon as I was free,
I set out on my journey, and my home is at the end of the
journey, wherever that may be."
"And the flower," she asked, "you have seen it again?"
"Once again, when I was a youth, I saw it. After a long
voyage upon stormy seas, we came into a quiet haven, and there
the friend who was dearest to me, said good-by, for he was
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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 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: that, at length, I had lighted on a spot where it was next to
impracticable - I, weak wretch, after maintaining till dusk a
struggle with low spirits and solitude, was finally compelled to
strike my colours; and under pretence of gaining information
concerning the necessities of my establishment, I desired Mrs.
Dean, when she brought in supper, to sit down while I ate it;
hoping sincerely she would prove a regular gossip, and either rouse
me to animation or lull me to sleep by her talk.
'You have lived here a considerable time,' I commenced; 'did you
not say sixteen years?'
'Eighteen, sir: I came when the mistress was married, to wait on
Wuthering Heights |
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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: pleasant lad, though now abandoned. And when it comes to your own
turn to quit the forest, may you leave behind you such another; no
Antony or Werther, let us hope, no tearful whipster, but, as
becomes this not uncheerful and most active age in which we figure,
the child of happy hours.
No art, it may be said, was ever perfect, and not many noble, that
has not been mirthfully conceived.
And no man, it may be added, was ever anything but a wet blanket
and a cross to his companions who boasted not a copious spirit of
enjoyment. Whether as man or artist let the youth make haste to
Fontainebleau, and once there let him address himself to the spirit
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