| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: Vauxhall; however, it's a fine place for a young fellow
to display his person to advantage. Indeed, nothing
is lost here; the girls have taste, and I am very happy
to find they have adopted the elegant London fashion
of looking back, after a genteel fellow like me has
passed them.--Ah! who comes here? This, by his
awkwardness, must be the Yankee colonel's servant.
I'll accost him.
Enter JONATHAN.
JESSAMY
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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 War in the Air by H. G. Wells: He beamed at Bert. "You DO look young," he remarked. "I always
thought you'd be an old man with a beard--a sort of philosopher.
I don't know why one should expect clever people always to be
old. I do."
Bert parried that compliment a little awkwardly, and then the
lieutenant was struck with the riddle why Herr Butteridge had not
come in his own flying machine.
"It's a long story," said Bert. "Look here!" he said abruptly,
"I wish you'd lend me a pair of slippers, or something. I'm
regular sick of these sandals. They're rotten things. I've been
trying them for a friend."
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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 Cratylus by Plato: 'he contrived'--out of these two words, eirein and mesasthai, the
legislator formed the name of the God who invented language and speech; and
we may imagine him dictating to us the use of this name: 'O my friends,'
says he to us, 'seeing that he is the contriver of tales or speeches, you
may rightly call him Eirhemes.' And this has been improved by us, as we
think, into Hermes. Iris also appears to have been called from the verb
'to tell' (eirein), because she was a messenger.
HERMOGENES: Then I am very sure that Cratylus was quite right in saying
that I was no true son of Hermes (Ermogenes), for I am not a good hand at
speeches.
SOCRATES: There is also reason, my friend, in Pan being the double-formed
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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 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: to near midnight, indeed--and the light of his lamp, shining from his
window at a salient angle of the hill-top town over infinite miles
of valley westward, announced as by words a place and person given
over to study, he was not exactly studying.
The interior of the room--the books, the furniture,
the schoolmaster's loose coat, his attitude at the table,
even the flickering of the fire, bespoke the same dignified
tale of undistracted research--more than creditable to a man
who had had no advantages beyond those of his own making.
And yet the tale, true enough till latterly, was not true now.
What he was regarding was not history. They were historic notes,
Jude the Obscure |
