| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: sinking exhausted into a chair. "Du Croisier is a tiger; we must be
careful not to rouse him. What time is it? Where is the draft? If it
is at Paris, it might be bought back from the Kellers; they might
accommodate us. Ah! but there are dangers on all sides; a single false
step means ruin. Money is wanted in any case. But there! nobody knows
you are here, you must live buried away in the cellar if needs must. I
will go at once to Paris as fast as I can; I can hear the mail coach
from Brest."
In a moment the old man recovered the faculties of his youth--his
agility and vigor. He packed up clothes for the journey, took money,
brought a six-pound loaf to the little room beyond the office, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: to forget eternally my ungrateful and perjured mistress. I
looked at the young woman who stood before me: she was
exceedingly pretty, and I could have wished that she had been
sufficiently so to render me inconstant in my turn. But there
were wanting those lovely and languishing eyes, that divine
gracefulness, that exquisite complexion, in fine, those
innumerable charms which nature had so profusely lavished upon
the perfidious Manon. `No, no,' said I, turning away from her;
`the ungrateful wretch who sent you knew in her heart that she
was sending you on a useless errand. Return to her; and tell her
from me, to triumph in her crime, and enjoy it, if she can,
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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 Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: "A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in
league with the devil, lives in the place you be going to--not
because there's anybody for'n to cure there, but because 'tis the
middle of his district."
The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at
parting, as a last attempt to get at his errand that way.
But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian
plunged towards the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the
dead leaves which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet.
As very few people except themselves passed this way after dark, a
majority of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains
The Woodlanders |
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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: had not met a traveller, when the sound of wheels -
CHAPTER I
'Yes, sir,' said the old pilot, 'she must have dropped into the bay
a little afore dawn. A queer craft she looks.'
'She shows no colours,' returned the young gentleman musingly.
'They're a-lowering of a quarter-boat, Mr. Mark,' resumed the old
salt. 'We shall soon know more of her.'
'Ay,' replied the young gentleman called Mark, 'and here, Mr.
Seadrift, comes your sweet daughter Nancy tripping down the cliff.'
'God bless her kind heart, sir,' ejaculated old Seadrift.
CHAPTER I
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