| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: sir, reply, I entreat you -- is not the Comte de la Fere a
noble whom I remember, handsome and brave, a musketeer under
Louis XIII., who must be now about forty-seven or
forty-eight years of age?"
"Yes, sir, you are right in every particular!"
"And who served under an assumed name?"
"Under the name of Athos. Latterly I heard his friend,
Monsieur d'Artagnan, give him that name."
"That is it, madame, that is the same. God be praised! And
he is in Paris?" continued he, addressing Raoul; then
turning to the queen: "We may still hope. Providence has
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: were already distinctly visible. She did not, indeed, know what
hostages Lily had already given to expediency; but she saw her
passionately and irretrievably pledged to the ruinous policy of
"keeping up." Gerty could smile now at her own early dream of her
friend's renovation through adversity: she understood clearly
enough that Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the
unimportance of what they have lost. But this very fact, to
Gerty, made her friend the more piteously in want of aid, the
more exposed to the claims of a tenderness she was so little
conscious of needing.
Lily, since her return to town, had not often climbed Miss
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: seemed to be a sort of Jesuitical formula of happiness, by which she
thought to satisfy all the requirements of married life. Her charity
was an offence, her soulless beauty was monstrous to those who knew
her; the mildness of her speech was an irritation: she acted, not on
feeling, but on duty.
There are faults which may yield in a wife to the stern lessons of
experience, or to a husband's warnings; but nothing can counteract
false ideas of religion. An eternity of happiness to be won, set in
the scale against worldly enjoyment, triumphs over everything and
makes every pang endurable. Is it not the apotheosis of egotism, of
Self beyond the grave? Thus even the Pope was censured at the tribunal
|
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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: went into Parliament, as I have been asked to do, I should sit on
the independent bench, as Wilberforce did, and work at philanthropy."
Mr. Casaubon bowed, and observed that it was a wide field.
"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, with an easy smile, "but I have documents.
I began a long while ago to collect documents. They want arranging,
but when a question has struck me, I have written to somebody and got
an answer. I have documents at my back. But now, how do you arrange
your documents?"
"In pigeon-holes partly," said Mr. Casaubon, with rather a startled
air of effort.
"Ah, pigeon-holes will not do. I have tried pigeon-holes, but everything
Middlemarch |
