| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: not entirely, to himself, would have felt himself decidedly
affronted by the neglect. But when I called there the day after my
interview with Mrs. Graham, he happened to be from home - a
circumstance by no means so agreeable to me now as it had been on
former occasions. Miss Millward was there, it is true, but she, of
course, would be little better than a nonentity. However, I
resolved to make my visit a short one, and to talk to Eliza in a
brotherly, friendly sort of way, such as our long acquaintance
might warrant me in assuming, and which, I thought, could neither
give offence nor serve to encourage false hopes.
It was never my custom to talk about Mrs. Graham either to her or
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: his log cabin, where we were to spend the evening.
By now it was dark, and a bitter cold swooped
down from the mountains. We built a fire in a huge
stone fireplace and sat around in the flickering light
telling ghost-stories to one another. The place was
rudely furnished, with only a hard earthen floor, and
chairs hewn by the axe. Rifles, spurs, bits, revolvers,
branding-irons in turn caught the light and vanished
in the shadow. The skin of a bear looked at us from
hollow eye-sockets in which there were no eyes. We
talked of the Long Trail. Outside the wind, rising,
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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 Protagoras by Plato: slipping away from the point, and instead of answering, making a speech at
such length that most of his hearers forget the question at issue (not that
Socrates is likely to forget--I will be bound for that, although he may
pretend in fun that he has a bad memory). And Socrates appears to me to be
more in the right than Protagoras; that is my view, and every man ought to
say what he thinks.
When Alcibiades had done speaking, some one--Critias, I believe--went on to
say: O Prodicus and Hippias, Callias appears to me to be a partisan of
Protagoras: and this led Alcibiades, who loves opposition, to take the
other side. But we should not be partisans either of Socrates or of
Protagoras; let us rather unite in entreating both of them not to break up
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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 Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: hanging from it; and on one of our holidays in the orchard
I ventured to ask him by what accident it was that he had lost his tail.
"Accident!" he snorted with a fierce look, "it was no accident!
it was a cruel, shameful, cold-blooded act! When I was young
I was taken to a place where these cruel things were done; I was tied up,
and made fast so that I could not stir, and then they came and cut off
my long and beautiful tail, through the flesh and through the bone,
and took it away.
"How dreadful!" I exclaimed.
"Dreadful, ah! it was dreadful; but it was not only the pain,
though that was terrible and lasted a long time; it was not only
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