| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: dinner were curious to know how I had endured the winter,
cut off from everybody and snowed up sometimes for weeks.
"Ah, these husbands!" sighed an ample lady, lugubriously shaking
her head; "they shut up their wives because it suits them, and don't
care what their sufferings are."
Then the others sighed and shook their heads too, for the ample lady
was a great local potentate, and one began to tell how another dreadful
<32> husband had brought his young wife into the country and had kept
her there, concealing her beauty and accomplishments from the public
in a most cruel manner, and how, after spending a certain number of years
in alternately weeping and producing progeny, she had quite lately run
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: where I lay. I kept from them at as great a distance as I could,
but was forced to move with extreme difficulty, for the stalks of
the corn were sometimes not above a foot distant, so that I could
hardly squeeze my body betwixt them. However, I made a shift to
go forward, till I came to a part of the field where the corn had
been laid by the rain and wind. Here it was impossible for me to
advance a step; for the stalks were so interwoven, that I could
not creep through, and the beards of the fallen ears so strong
and pointed, that they pierced through my clothes into my flesh.
At the same time I heard the reapers not a hundred yards behind
me. Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by
Gulliver's Travels |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born
in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced.
She instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion and
taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect and an
independence of spirit forbidden to the female followers of Muhammad.
This lady died, but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind
of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and
being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy
herself with infantile amusements, ill-suited to the temper of her soul,
now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation for virtue.
The prospect of marrying a Christian and remaining in a country where
Frankenstein |
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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower
still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the
United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with
the contents of its wine-cellars? What position would its
expenditure on literature take, as compared with its expenditure on
luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the
body: now a good book contains such food inexhaustibly; it is a
provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most
people would look at the best book before they would give the price
of a large turbot for it? Though there have been men who have
pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose
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