| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: Lady, who carried this report to Thebes?
JOCASTA
A serf, the sole survivor who returned.
OEDIPUS
Haply he is at hand or in the house?
JOCASTA
No, for as soon as he returned and found
Thee reigning in the stead of Laius slain,
He clasped my hand and supplicated me
To send him to the alps and pastures, where
He might be farthest from the sight of Thebes.
Oedipus Trilogy |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: and dated from London, as far back as July, 1803: --
"Dear Smith,--I have received yours. Your kindness almost overpowers me.
I wish nature had made such hearts as yours more common, but I have
lived three-and-twenty years in the world, and have seen none like it.
At present, believe me, I have no need of your services,
being in cash again. Give me joy: I have got rid of Sir Walter and Miss.
They are gone back to Kellynch, and almost made me swear to visit them
this summer; but my first visit to Kellynch will be with a surveyor,
to tell me how to bring it with best advantage to the hammer.
The baronet, nevertheless, is not unlikely to marry again;
he is quite fool enough. If he does, however, they will leave me in peace,
Persuasion |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: sixty thousand words of sterling domestic fiction (the story,
you will understand, is only half that length); and now I
don't want to write any more again for ever, or feel so; and
I've got to overhaul it once again to my sorrow. I was all
yesterday revising, and found a lot of slacknesses and (what
is worse in this kind of thing) some literaryisms. One of
the puzzles is this: It is a first person story - a trader
telling his own adventure in an island. When I began I
allowed myself a few liberties, because I was afraid of the
end; now the end proved quite easy, and could be done in the
pace; so the beginning remains about a quarter tone out (in
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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 Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: proofs of superior capabilities. Those who had known him long were not
indeed surprised to see him display all the talents and various
aptitudes of a statesman; still it might yet be a question whether he
would prove to be a solid politician, or had merely been moulded in
the fire of circumstance. This question had just been asked by a man
whom he had made a prefet, a man of wit and observation, who had for a
long time been a journalist, and who admired de Marsay without
infusing into his admiration that dash of acrid criticism by which, in
Paris, one superior man excuses himself from admiring another.
"Was there ever," said he, "in your former life, any event, any
thought or wish which told you what your vocation was?" asked Emile
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