| 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: all should be equally hateful to him. This I have now effected;
and since he declares that the taste, the smell, the sight of any
one of them is sufficient to make him sick, I have given up teasing
him about them, except now and then as objects of terror in cases
of misbehaviour. 'Arthur, if you're not a good boy I shall give
you a glass of wine,' or 'Now, Arthur, if you say that again you
shall have some brandy-and-water,' is as good as any other threat;
and once or twice, when he was sick, I have obliged the poor child
to swallow a little wine-and-water without the tartar-emetic, by
way of medicine; and this practice I intend to continue for some
time to come; not that I think it of any real service in a physical
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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: a word with you," said she -- "a word that concerns us much. "
"Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word
HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 203
for old Roger Chillingworth?" answered he, raising himself from
The Scarlet Letter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: large; and such pain as can be inflicted by anything from me must
be indeed trifling when compared with the pain with which they read
your letter. It is not the hangman, but the criminal, that brings
dishonour on the house.
You belong, sir, to a sect - I believe my sect, and that in which
my ancestors laboured - which has enjoyed, and partly failed to
utilise, and exceptional advantage in the islands of Hawaii. The
first missionaries came; they found the land already self-purged of
its old and bloody faith; they were embraced, almost on their
arrival, with enthusiasm; what troubles they supported came far
more from whites than from Hawaiins; and to these last they stood
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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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: cottages on the left, and here were ducks, and there were willows on
the right,--and so came to where great trees grew on high banks on
either hand and bowed closer, and at last met overhead. This part
was difficult to reach because of an old fence, but a little boy
might glimpse that long cavern of greenery by wading. Either I have
actually seen kingfishers there, or my father has described them so
accurately to me that he inserted them into my memory. I remember
them there anyhow. Most of that overhung part I never penetrated at
all, but followed the field path with my mother and met the stream
again, where beyond there were flat meadows, Roper's meadows. The
Ravensbrook went meandering across the middle of these, now between
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