| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: them. It is so hard to earn a living this way that I'm the only man in
these parts who fishes along-shore. I spend whole days without getting
anything. To catch a crab, it must go to sleep, as this one did, and a
lobster must be silly enough to stay among the rocks. Sometimes after
a high tide the mussels come in and I grab them."
"Well, taking one day with another, how much do you earn?"
"Oh, eleven or twelve sous. I could do with that if I were alone; but
I have got my old father to keep, and he can't do anything, the good
man, because he's blind."
At these words, said simply, Pauline and I looked at each other
without a word; then I asked,--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: round face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water, he
reached for a towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy and vile, all
of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them--his own face-towel, his
wife's, Verona's, Ted's, Tinka's, and the lone bath-towel with the huge welt
of initial. Then George F. Babbitt did a dismaying thing. He wiped his face
on the guest-towel! It was a pansy-embroidered trifle which always hung there
to indicate that the Babbitts were in the best Floral Heights society. No one
had ever used it. No guest had ever dared to. Guests secretively took a
corner of the nearest regular towel.
He was raging, "By golly, here they go and use up all the towels, every
doggone one of 'em, and they use 'em and get 'em all wet and sopping, and
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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 Falk by Joseph Conrad: be got to say "yes" or "no" to the simplest ques-
tion)--against his outrageous treatment of the
shipping in port (because he saw they were at his
mercy)--and against his manner of walking,
which to his (Hermann's) mind showed a conceit
positively unbearable. The damage to the old
Diana was not forgotten, of course, and there was
nothing of any nature said or done by Falk (even
to the last offer of refreshment in the hotel) that
did not seem to have been a cause of offence.
"Had the cheek" to drag him (Hermann) into
Falk |
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 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: from explaining all," he added, and with the words fell into a
vein of musing.
From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather
suddenly: "And you don't know if the drawer of the cheque lives
there?"
"A likely place, isn't it?" returned Mr. Enfield. "But I
happen to have noticed his address; he lives in some square or
other."
"And you never asked about the--place with the door?" said
Mr. Utterson.
"No, sir: I had a delicacy," was the reply. "I feel very
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
