| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: It happened to be the day of a Parsee festival. These descendants
of the sect of Zoroaster--the most thrifty, civilised, intelligent,
and austere of the East Indians, among whom are counted the richest
native merchants of Bombay--were celebrating a sort of religious carnival,
with processions and shows, in the midst of which Indian dancing-girls,
clothed in rose-coloured gauze, looped up with gold and silver,
danced airily, but with perfect modesty, to the sound of viols
and the clanging of tambourines. It is needless to say that Passepartout
watched these curious ceremonies with staring eyes and gaping mouth,
and that his countenance was that of the greenest booby imaginable.
Unhappily for his master, as well as himself, his curiosity
Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the
portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase
its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has
fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.
It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were
spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have
removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that
there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a
new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words
acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any -- the slightest --
The Scarlet Letter |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: shine, and left by unlucky circumstances in the shade, a woman whose
influence decided Lucien's career.
M. de Bargeton was the great-grandson of an alderman of Bordeaux named
Mirault, ennobled under Louis XIII. for long tenure of office. His
son, bearing the name of Mirault de Bargeton, became an officer in the
household troops of Louis XIV., and married so great a fortune that in
the reign of Louis XV. his son dropped the Mirault and was called
simply M. de Bargeton. This M. de Bargeton, the alderman's grandson,
lived up to his quality so strenuously that he ran through the family
property and checked the course of its fortunes. Two of his brothers
indeed, great-uncles of the present Bargeton, went into business
|
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 Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: room. All the pieces of metal there, even
their watch-chains, felt so hot that they
could scarcely bear to touch them for a
moment, while the air from which the
metal had derived all its heat was only
unpleasant. M. Duhamel and Tillet
observed, at Rochefoucault in France, that
the girls who were accustomed to attend
ovens in a bakehouse, were capable of
enduring for ten minutes a temperature of
270 degrees.
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
