| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: The city had swallowed up humanity; man had entered
upon a new stage in his development. First had come
the nomad, the hunter, then had followed the agriculturist
of the agricultural state, whose towns and cities
and ports were but the headquarters and markets of
the countryside. And now, logical consequence of
an epoch of invention, was this huge new aggregation
of men. Save London, there were only four other
cities in Britain -- Edinburgh, Portsmouth,
Manchester and Shrewsbury. Such things as these, simple
statements of fact though they were to contemporary
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: been sent to him. For it would have been impossible for him to hide
from Eppie that she was not his own child: even if the most delicate
reticence on the point could have been expected from Raveloe gossips
in her presence, her own questions about her mother could not have
been parried, as she grew up, without that complete shrouding of the
past which would have made a painful barrier between their minds.
So Eppie had long known how her mother had died on the snowy ground,
and how she herself had been found on the hearth by father Silas,
who had taken her golden curls for his lost guineas brought back to
him. The tender and peculiar love with which Silas had reared her
in almost inseparable companionship with himself, aided by the
Silas Marner |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: Ye Onlie True and Originale Spook.
Beware of Ye Imitationes.
All others are Counterfeite.
The whole thing flashed across him. He had been tricked, foiled,
and outwitted! The old Canterville look came into his eyes; he
ground his toothless gums together; and, raising his withered hands
high above his head, swore, according to the picturesque
phraseology of the antique school, that when Chanticleer had
sounded twice his merry horn, deeds of blood would be wrought, and
Murder walk abroad with silent feet.
Hardly had he finished this awful oath when, from the red-tiled
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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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: communicate by signs.
At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I am in
France, to preach political good-will and moderation, and to dwell
on the example of Poland, much as some alarmists in England dwell
on the example of Carthage. The priest and the commandant assured
me of their sympathy with all I said, and made a heavy sighing over
the bitterness of contemporary feeling.
'Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not
absolutely agree,' said I, 'but he flies up at you in a temper.'
They both declared that such a state of things was antichristian.
While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but
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