| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: key tonight."
"Charity, let me in. I don't want the key. I'm a
lonesome man," he began, in the deep voice that
sometimes moved her.
Her heart gave a startled plunge, but she continued to
hold him back contemptuously. "Well, I guess you made
a mistake, then. This ain't your wife's room any
longer."
She was not frightened, she simply felt a deep disgust;
and perhaps he divined it or read it in her face, for
after staring at her a moment he drew back and turned
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: considerably apart and his hands in his trouser-pockets: a person
in all respects a contrast to the sleek and cool Rigg. He was a man
obviously on the way towards sixty, very florid and hairy, with much
gray in his bushy whiskers and thick curly hair, a stoutish body
which showed to disadvantage the somewhat worn joinings of his clothes,
and the air of a swaggerer, who would aim at being noticeable even at
a show of fireworks, regarding his own remarks on any other person's
performance as likely to be more interesting than the performance itself.
His name was John Raffles, and he sometimes wrote jocosely W.A.G.
after his signature, observing when he did so, that he was once
taught by Leonard Lamb of Finsbury who wrote B.A. after his name,
Middlemarch |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: tured into the village. The land he looked upon
seemed to him kept neatly, like the grounds round
a landowner's house; the size of the cart-horses
struck him with astonishment; the roads resembled
garden walks, and the aspect of the people, espe-
cially on Sundays, spoke of opulence. He won-
dered what made them so hardhearted and their
children so bold. He got his food at the back door,
carried it in both hands carefully to his outhouse,
and, sitting alone on his pallet, would make the sign
of the cross before he began. Beside the same pal-
Amy Foster |
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 Adam Bede by George Eliot: lighter, and I turned back the way I'd come. I couldn't help it,
Dinah; it was the baby's crying made me go--and yet I was
frightened to death. I thought that man in the smock-frock 'ud
see me and know I put the baby there. But I went on, for all
that. I'd left off thinking about going home--it had gone out o'
my mind. I saw nothing but that place in the wood where I'd
buried the baby...I see it now. Oh Dinah! shall I allays see it?"
Hetty clung round Dinah and shuddered again. The silence seemed
long before she went on.
"I met nobody, for it was very early, and I got into the wood....I
knew the way to the place...the place against the nut-tree; and I
Adam Bede |
