| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: mouth was open, and he was grinning. And yet, though
he had just begun to exert his strength, in that moment
he wrenched my shoulder so that I suffered from it for
the remainder of my life.
And in that moment something happened. There was no
warning. A great body smashed down upon the four of us
locked together. We were driven violently apart and
rolled over and over, and in the suddenness of surprise
we released our holds on one another. At the moment of
the shock, Big-Face screamed terribly. I did not know
what had happened, though I smelled tiger and caught a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: unrecognizable. We have seen illusion after illusion scraped
from them by the pumice-stone of experience, while the
appalling state of the industries which they now largely
control, and the ruin of the country in which they attained
that control, have forced them to alter their immediate aims
to meet immediate dangers, and have accelerated the process
of adaptation made inevitable by their victory.
The process of adaptation has had the natural result of
producing new internal cleavages. Change after change in
their programme and theory of the Russian Trades Unionists
has been due to the pressure of life itself, to the urgency of
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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 Aspern Papers by Henry James: It was as if at such a moment as that, in the stillness, after the long
contradiction of the day, Miss Bordereau's secrets were in the air,
the wonder of her survival more palpable. These were the acute impressions.
I had them in another form, with more of a certain sort of reciprocity,
during the hours that I sat in the garden looking up over the top
of my book at the closed windows of my hostess. In these windows
no sign of life ever appeared; it was as if, for fear of my catching
a glimpse of them, the two ladies passed their days in the dark.
But this only proved to me that they had something to conceal;
which was what I had wished to demonstrate. Their motionless shutters
became as expressive as eyes consciously closed, and I took comfort
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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 She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: entertaining. There's nothing in the world I love to talk of so much
as London, and the fashions, though I was never there myself.
HASTINGS. Never there! You amaze me! From your air and manner, I
concluded you had been bred all your life either at Ranelagh, St.
James's, or Tower Wharf.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. O! sir, you're only pleased to say so. We country
persons can have no manner at all. I'm in love with the town, and that
serves to raise me above some of our neighbouring rustics; but who can
have a manner, that has never seen the Pantheon, the Grotto Gardens,
the Borough, and such places where the nobility chiefly resort? All I
can do is to enjoy London at second-hand. I take care to know every
She Stoops to Conquer |
