| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: ``There came news that my husband was ill in Mobile, and I feared
that it was of the Dreadful Fever, and I hurried there so that I
could get to him before the Dreadful Quarantines were put on. I
felt all safe about the baby, for I left her with my mother and the
faithful nurse who had been my nurse, too. But when the worst had
come and was over,--and it was the Dreadful Fever,--then I tried to
get back to my home; but I could not for many, many days, because
the Dreadful Quarantines were on. Then at last I did get there--I
slipped up secretly by water. All were gone. I could find no one
who could tell me anything. I could find no one who knew anything.
The house was wide open. There was no sign of life, but that the
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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 Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails 270
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
The Waste Land |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: their lives to him, and would go with him all over the world; that
they would own him as a father to them as long as they lived.
"Well," says the captain, "I must go and tell the governor what you
say, and see what I can do to bring him to consent to it." So he
brought me an account of the temper he found them in, and that he
verily believed they would be faithful. However, that we might be
very secure, I told him he should go back again and choose out
those five, and tell them, that they might see he did not want men,
that he would take out those five to be his assistants, and that
the governor would keep the other two, and the three that were sent
prisoners to the castle (my cave), as hostages for the fidelity of
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: spirit. The heart has the singular power of giving extraordinary
value to mere nothings. What joy it is to a traveler to treasure
a blade of grass, an unfamiliar leaf, if he has risked his life
to pluck it! It is the same with the trifles of love.
The old lady was not in the drawing-room. When the young girl
found herself there, alone with the painter, she brought a chair
to stand on, to take down the picture; but perceiving that she
could not unhook it without setting her foot on the chest of
drawers, she turned to Hippolyte, and said with a blush:
"I am not tall enough. Will you get it down?"
A feeling of modesty, betrayed in the expression of her face and
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