| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: black hair mixed with white, like the wing of a magpie, escaped from
the colonel's cap, while handsome brown curls adorned the brow of the
statesman. One was tall, gallant, high-strung, and the lines of his
pallid face showed terrible passions or frightful griefs. The other
had a face that was brilliant with health, and jovially worth of an
epicurean. Both were deeply sun-burned, and their high gaiters of
tanned leather showed signs of the bogs and the thickets they had just
come through.
"Come," said Monsieur de Sucy, "let us get on. A short hour's march,
and we shall reach Cassan in time for a good dinner."
"It is easy to see you have never loved," replied the councillor, with
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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 Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: to all hours and went out in the heat, but a few hours in bed would
cure it completely. Terence was unreasonably reassured by her words,
as he had been unreasonably depressed the moment before. Helen's sense
seemed to have much in common with the ruthless good sense of nature,
which avenged rashness by a headache, and, like nature's good sense,
might be depended upon.
Rachel went to bed; she lay in the dark, it seemed to her,
for a very long time, but at length, waking from a transparent
kind of sleep, she saw the windows white in front of her,
and recollected that some time before she had gone to bed with
a headache, and that Helen had said it would be gone when she woke.
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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 House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: to Lily, as she heard its door clang on her! In reality, as she
knew, the door never clanged: it stood always open; but most of
the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having once flown
in, could never regain their freedom. It was Selden's distinction
that he had never forgotten the way out.
That was the secret of his way of readjusting her vision. Lily,
turning her eyes from him, found herself scanning her little
world through his retina: it was as though the pink lamps had
been shut off and the dusty daylight let in. She looked down the
long table, studying its occupants one by one, from Gus Trenor,
with his heavy carnivorous head sunk between his shoulders, as he
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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 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: and worked in a shirt factory.
Chapter IX
A group of urchins were intent upon the side door of a saloon.
Expectancy gleamed from their eyes. They were twisting their
fingers in excitement.
"Here she comes," yelled one of them suddenly.
The group of urchins burst instantly asunder and its
individual fragments were spread in a wide, respectable half circle
about the point of interest. The saloon door opened with a crash,
and the figure of a woman appeared upon the threshold. Her grey
hair fell in knotted masses about her shoulders. Her face was
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
