| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: direction had long since retreated to their homes, leaving the
little settlement on the border of the Adirondack wilderness wholly
under the social direction of the natives.
The annual ball was in full swing in the dining-room of the hotel.
At one side of the room the tables and chairs were piled up, with
their legs projecting in the air like a thicket of very dead trees.
The huge stove in the southeast corner was blushing a rosy red
through its thin coat of whitewash, and exhaling a furious dry heat
flavoured with the smell of baked iron. At the north end, however,
winter reigned; and there were tiny ridges of fine snow on the
floor, sifted in by the wind through the cracks in the window-
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: back. I remember that he was much astonished at my parting with two
blankets for the sake of such a worthless old creature. 'Why did I not
leave her in the bush?' he asked. Those people carry the doctrine of
the survival of the fittest to its extreme, you see.
"It was the night after I had got rid of the old woman that I made my
first acquaintance with my friend yonder," and he nodded towards the
skull that seemed to be grinning down at us in the shadow of the wide
mantelshelf. "I had trekked from dawn till eleven o'clock--a long
trek--but I wanted to get on, and had turned the oxen out to graze,
sending the voorlooper to look after them, my intention being to inspan
again about six o'clock, and trek with the moon till ten. Then I got
Long Odds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: that are true? What was this young man doing in Kings Port with his
brains, and his pride, and his energetic adolescence? If the Custom House
galled him, the whole country was open to him; why not have tried his
fortune out and away, over the hills, where the new cities lie, all full
of future and empty of past? Was it much to the credit of such a young
man to find himself at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four, sound and
lithe of limb, yet tied to the apron strings of Miss Josephine, and Miss
Eliza, and some thirty or forty other elderly female relatives?
With these thoughts I looked at the ladies and wondered how I might lead
them to answer me about John Mayrant, without asking questions which
might imply something derogatory to him or painful to them. I could not
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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 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: complaining. Our importance, our respectability in the world
must be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain
of all restraint which mark Lydia's character. Excuse me, for I
must speak plainly. If you, my dear father, will not take the
trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her
that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she
will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will
be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt
that ever made herself or her family ridiculous; a flirt, too, in the
worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction
beyond youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance
Pride and Prejudice |
