| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: Enter HASTINGS.
HASTINGS. Bless me! I quite forgot to tell her that I intended to
prepare at the bottom of the garden. Marlow here, and in spirits too!
MARLOW. Give me joy, George! Crown me, shadow me with laurels!
Well, George, after all, we modest fellows don't want for success
among the women.
HASTINGS. Some women, you mean. But what success has your honour's
modesty been crowned with now, that it grows so insolent upon us?
MARLOW. Didn't you see the tempting, brisk, lovely little thing, that
runs about the house with a bunch of keys to its girdle?
HASTINGS. Well, and what then?
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "It's the devil of a mess," he commented. "I suppose the square
thing to do is to tell Doctor David, and let him decide. I've got
too much at stake to be a judge of what to do."
He went upstairs soon after that, leaving her still in her chair,
swathed in furs, her round anxious face bent forward in thought.
He had rarely seen her so troubled, so uncertain of her next move,
and he surmised, knowing her, that her emotions were a complex of
anxiety for himself with Elizabeth, of pity for David, and of the
memory of Dick Livingstone's haggard face.
She sat alone for some time and then went reluctantly up the
stairs to her bedroom. She felt, like Wallie, that she had too
The Breaking Point |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: Billy made an unseemly rejoinder, but even in the making was visited by
inspiration. He saw the whole thing as it really was. "By Jove!" said
he, "we couldn't get back in time for dinner."
"There's my bonny boy!" said Bertie, with pride; and he touched up the
black gelding. Uneasiness had left both of them. Cambridge was
manifestly impossible; an error in judgment; food compelled them to seek
the Bird-in-Hand. "We'll try Quincy, anyhow," Bertie said. Billy
suggested that they inquire of people on the road. This provided a new
sporting event: they could bet upon the answers. Now, the roads, not
populous at noon, had grown solitary in the sweetness of the long
twilight. Voices of birds there were; and little, black, quick brooks,
|
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 Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: that the hole was full of beauty. From the spot which Grace had
reached a stone could easily have been thrown over or into, the
birds'-nested chimneys of the mansion. Its walls were surmounted
by a battlemented parapet; but the gray lead roofs were quite
visible behind it, with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights,
together with incised letterings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers
thereon.
The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation
of Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich
snuff-colored freestone from local quarries. The ashlar of the
walls, where not overgrown with ivy and other creepers, was coated
The Woodlanders |
