| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: ashes. - No, I must not think of such an ending! Dying would be a
much more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. Make a will
and leave her a house or two and some stocks, and other little
financial conveniences, to take away her necessity for keeping
school. - I wonder what nice young man's feet would be in my French
slippers before six months were over! Well, what then? If a man
really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the
world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she
could by any possibility marry.
- It is odd enough to read over what I have just been writing. - It
is the merest fancy that ever was in the world. I shall never be
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: to them unobserved all the time. There were legs in the shadow.
A melancholy voice issued from above them.
"Two women," it said.
A scuffling was heard on the gravel. The women had fled. They did
not stop running until they felt certain that no eye could penetrate
the darkness and the hotel was only a square shadow in the distance,
with red holes regularly cut in it.
Chapter IX
An hour passed, and the downstairs rooms at the hotel grew dim
and were almost deserted, while the little box-like squares above
them were brilliantly irradiated. Some forty or fifty people
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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 Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
Prufrock/Other Observations |
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 Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: pain. When pressed about her brother's peculiarities, she asked,
in her turn, why they would not permit the dead to rest? To
others, who pressed for some account of her parents, she answered
in the same tone of feeling.
The author saw this poor, and, it may be said, unhappy man, in
autumn 1797 being then, as he has the happiness still to remain,
connected by ties of intimate friendship with the family of the
venerable Dr. Adam Fergusson, the philosopher and historian, who
then resided at the mansion-house of Halyards, in the vale of
Manor, about a mile from Ritchie's hermitage, the author was upon
a visit at Halyards, which lasted for several days, and was made
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