| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: times?' And I said, 'Because, sir, I see things be bad with
'ee, and ye wer kind-like to mother if ye wer rough to
me, and I would fain be kind-like to you.' Then he walked
on, and I followed; and he never complained at me no more.
We walked on like that all night; and in the blue o' the
morning, when 'twas hardly day, I looked ahead o' me, and I
zeed that he wambled, and could hardly drag along. By the
time we had got past here, but I had seen that this house
was empty as I went by, and I got him to come back; and I
took down the boards from the windows, and helped him
inside. 'What, Whittle,' he said, 'and can ye really be
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: in engravings from paintings of the Spanish school. She was here--
actually in this Close--in one of the houses confronting this very
west facade.
He went down the broad gravel path towards the building.
It was an ancient edifice of the fifteenth century, once a palace,
now a training-school, with mullioned and transomed windows,
and a courtyard in front shut in from the road by a wall.
Jude opened the gate and went up to the door through which,
on inquiring for his cousin, he was gingerly admitted to a
waiting-room, and in a few minutes she came.
Though she had been here such a short while, she was not
Jude the Obscure |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: "I don't see's there's much difference."
"Well, I guess I'll get the doctor to come round again," Ann
Eliza said, trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might
speak of sending for the plumber or the gas-fitter.
"It ain't any use sending for the doctor--and who's going to
pay him?"
"I am," answered the elder sister. "Here's your tea, and a
mite of toast. Don't that tempt you?"
Already, in the watches of the night, Ann Eliza had been
tormented by that same question--who was to pay the doctor?--and a
few days before she had temporarily silenced it by borrowing twenty
|
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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: robustness. Compare any typical Greek face, with its firm
muscles, its symmetry of feature, and its serenity of expression,
to a typical modern portrait, with its more delicate contour, its
exaggerated forehead, its thoughtful, perhaps jaded look. Or
consider in what respects the grand faces of the Plantagenet
monarchs differ from the refined countenances of the leading
English statesmen of to-day. Or again, consider the familiar
pictures of the Oxford and Harvard crews which rowed a race on
the Thames in 1869, and observe how much less youthful are the
faces of the Americans. By contrast they almost look careworn.
The summing up of countless such facts is that modern
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
