| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: them. As well as her luggage strapped into a neat sausage, Fenella carried
clasped to her her grandma's umbrella, and the handle, which was a swan's
head, kept giving her shoulder a sharp little peck as if it too wanted her
to hurry...Men, their caps pulled down, their collars turned up, swung by;
a few women all muffled scurried along; and one tiny boy, only his little
black arms and legs showing out of a white woolly shawl, was jerked along
angrily between his father and mother; he looked like a baby fly that had
fallen into the cream.
Then suddenly, so suddenly that Fenella and her grandma both leapt, there
sounded from behind the largest wool shed, that had a trail of smoke
hanging over it, "Mia-oo-oo-O-O!"
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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 Europeans by Henry James: "how one looks behind."
"I should say it mattered more," said Gertrude. "Then you don't
know who may be observing you. You are not on your guard.
You can't try to look pretty."
Charlotte received this declaration with extreme gravity.
"I don't think one should ever try to look pretty,"
she rejoined, earnestly.
Her companion was silent. Then she said, "Well, perhaps it
's not of much use."
Charlotte looked at her a little, and then kissed her.
"I hope you will be better when we come back."
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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 The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: to inquire the nature of their business.
Such farmhouses as he came upon he gave a wide berth
except at night, and then he only approached them stealthily
for such provender as he might filch. Before the week was
up he had become an expert chicken thief, being able to rob
a roost as quietly as the most finished carpetbagger on the
sunny side of Mason and Dixon's line.
A careless housewife, leaving her lord and master's rough
shirt and trousers hanging upon the line overnight, had
made possible for Barney the coveted change in raiment.
Now he was barged as a Luthanian peasant. He was hat-
The Mad King |
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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: "no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don't. But if I did,
you know, there's a thing I should require now, just without sparing
you the least bit more--oh, not a scrap, come!--to get out of you.
What was it you had in mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back,
over the letter from his school, you said, under my insistence,
that you didn't pretend for him that he had not literally EVER
been `bad'? He has NOT literally `ever,' in these weeks that I
myself have lived with him and so closely watched him; he has been
an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, lovable goodness.
Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for him
if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take.
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