| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: the uniform of a French private soldier, one of those odd and
mpracticable uniforms of France during the first year, baggy dark blue
trousers, stiff cap, and the long-tailed coat, its skirts turned back
and faced. Round his neck he wore a knitted scarf, which covered his
chin, and, true to the instinct of the French peasant in a winter
campaign, he wore innumerable undergarments, the red of a jersey showing
through rents in his coat.
Gone were Henri's long clean lines, his small waist and broad shoulders,
the swing of his walk. Instead, he walked with the bent-kneed swing of
the French infantryman, that tireless but awkward marching step which
renders the French Army so mobile.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: till night; yet her husband would rob the till, and take away the
money reserved for paying bills; and, returning home drunk, he
would beat her if she chanced to offend him, though she had a child
at the breast.
"These scenes awoke me at night; and, in the morning,
I heard her, as usual, talk to her dear Johnny--he, forsooth,
was her master; no slave in the West Indies had one more despotic;
but fortunately she was of the true Russian breed of wives.
"My mind, during the few past days, seemed, as it were,
disengaged from my body; but, now the struggle was over, I felt
very forcibly the effect which perturbation of spirits produces
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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 The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: Now, where's my wife?
BIONDELLO.
She says you have some goodly jest in hand:
She will not come; she bids you come to her.
PETRUCHIO.
Worse and worse; she will not come! O vile,
Intolerable, not to be endur'd!
Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress; say,
I command her come to me.
[Exit GRUMIO.]
The Taming of the Shrew |
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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the
Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's
curiosity and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their
snake-like black eyes on Hester's bosom, conceiving, perhaps,
that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must
298 THE SCARLET LETTER
The Scarlet Letter |
