| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: more than once. Of the darkness, the silence, the secrecy, the
guilty smile, of all that he had expected to meet here and had
dreaded, he saw no trace.
Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one
thing faintly stirred his curiosity -- the terrible, as it were
intentionally designed, bad taste which was visible in the
cornices, in the absurd pictures, in the dresses, in the bunch
of ribbons. There was something characteristic and peculiar in
this bad taste.
"How poor and stupid it all is!" thought Vassilyev. "What is
there in all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: "Choose something smaller?" said I.
"No...'tell me about it beforehand.' Humiliating! And I do not see any
possible light out of this darkness."
"Why don't you join a touring company and leave your mother in Vienna?"
"What! Leave my poor, little, sick, widowed mother in Vienna! Sooner than
that I would drown myself. I love my mother as I love nobody else in the
world--nobody and nothing! Do you think it is impossible to love one's
tragedy? 'Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs,' that is Heine
or myself."
"Oh, well, that's all right," I said cheerfully.
"'But it is not all right!"
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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 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: and Mr. Donavan found the house in all this uproar.
The carriage was at the door ready to take my poor
cousins away, and they were just stepping in as he
came off; poor Lucy in such a condition, he says,
she could hardly walk; and Nancy, she was almost as bad.
I declare, I have no patience with your sister; and I hope,
with all my heart, it will be a match in spite of her.
Lord! what a taking poor Mr. Edward will be in when he
hears of it! To have his love used so scornfully! for
they say he is monstrous fond of her, as well he may.
I should not wonder, if he was to be in the greatest
Sense and Sensibility |
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 White Moll by Frank L. Packard: who wore shawls as she did, only the shawls were mostly of gaudy
colors; and men pushed up behind her, mostly men of swarthy
countenance, who wore circlets of gold in their ears; and, brushing
her skirts, seeking vantage points, ragged, ill-clad children
wriggled and wormed their way deeper into the press. It was a crowd
composed almost entirely of the foreign element which inhabited that
quarter - and the crowd chattered and gesticulated with
ever-increasing violence. She did not understand. And she could not
see so well now. That pitiful tableau in the doorway was being shut
out from her by a man, directly in front of her, who had hoisted a
half-naked tot of three or four to a reserved seat upon his head.
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