| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes
or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot.
Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles
of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the
churchyard, between services on Sundays; gathering grapes for
them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees;
reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones;
or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the
adjacent mill-pond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung
sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.
From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: wipes out the past. The Marquise knew well the art of setting an
immense space between herself and the sort of man who fancies he may
be familiar after some chance advances. Her imposing gaze could deny
everything. In her conversation fine and beautiful sentiments and
noble resolutions flowed naturally, as it seemed, from a pure heart
and soul; but in reality she was all self, and quite capable of
blasting a man who was clumsy in his negotiations, at the very time
when she was shamelessly making a compromise for the benefit of her
own interest.
Rastignac, in trying to fasten on to this woman, had discerned her to
be the cleverest of tools, but he had not yet used it; far from
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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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: meat and defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds his
greatest satisfaction; it serves to render the degradation and uselessness
of his existence less obvious to himself and to others than if he passed
his life reclining in an armchair.
On Yorkshire moors today may be seen walls of sod, behind which hide
certain human males, while hard-labouring men are employed from early dawn
in driving birds towards them. As the birds are driven up to him, the
hunter behind his wall raises his deadly weapon, and the bird, which it had
taken so much human labour to rear and provide, falls dead at his feet;
thereby greatly to the increase of the hunter's glory, when, the toils of
the chase over, he returns to his city haunts to record his bag. One might
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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 The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: more subject, than those wiser countries that feed on herbs, salads, and
plenty of fish; of which it is observed in story, that the greatest part of
the world now do. And it may be fit to remember that Moses appointed
fish to be the chief diet for the best commonwealth that ever yet was.
And it is observable, not only that there are fish, as namely the Whale,
three times as big as the mighty Elephant, that is so fierce in battle, but
that the mightiest feasts have been of fish. The Romans, in the height of
their glory, have made fish the mistress of all their entertainments; they
have had musick to usher in their Sturgeons, Lampreys, and Mullets,
which they would purchase at rates rather to be wondered at than
believed. He that shall view the writings of Macrobius, or Varro, may
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