The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: she cannot be interested in any thing that befalls him.--
She would not be so weak as to throw away the comfort
of a child, and yet retain the anxiety of a parent!"
"Ah! Elinor," said John, "your reasoning is very good,
but it is founded on ignorance of human nature.
When Edward's unhappy match takes place, depend upon it
his mother will feel as much as if she had never discarded him;
and, therefore every circumstance that may accelerate that
dreadful event, must be concealed from her as much as possible.
Mrs. Ferrars can never forget that Edward is her son."
"You surprise me; I should think it must nearly
Sense and Sensibility |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: new freedoms, and unable to make any civilised use of them whatever;
stricken now by this idea and now by that, tempted first by one
possession and then another to ill-considered attempts; it was my
father's exploitahon of his villa gardens on the wholesale level.
The whole of Bromstead as I remember it, and as I saw it last--it is
a year ago now--is a dull useless boiling-up of human activities, an
immense clustering of futilities. It is as unfinished as ever; the
builders' roads still run out and end in mid-field in their old
fashion; the various enterprises jumble in the same hopeless
contradiction, if anything intensified. Pretentious villas jostle
slums, and public-house and tin tabernacle glower at one another
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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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: of this officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it
noble. He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her
virtue, her modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest
treasures of his hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to
inspire one of those platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid
bloody ruins, in the history of the middle-ages; worthy to be the
hidden principle of all the actions of a young man's life; a love as
high, as pure as the skies when blue; a love without hope and to which
men bind themselves because it can never deceive; a love that is
prodigal of unchecked enjoyment, especially at an age when the heart
is ardent, the imagination keen, and the eyes of a man see very
Ferragus |
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 Before Adam by Jack London: We turned and ran. We dashed across the open spaces
and down the slopes unmindful of possible snakes in the
grass, until we reached the woods. Up into the trees
we went, and on and on, swinging our arboreal flight
until we had put miles between us and the caves. And
then, and not till then, in the security of a great
fork, we paused, looked at each other, and began to
laugh. We held on to each other, arms and legs, our
eyes streaming tears, our ,sides aching, and laughed
and laughed and laughed.
CHAPTER X
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