| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: night and day, yet discovered nothing. The evil intentions seeming
specially designed to injure Harry. Starr forbade him to venture alone
beyond the ordinary limits of the works.
They were equally careful of Nell, although, at Harry's entreaty,
these malicious attempts to do harm were concealed from her,
because they might remind her painfully
of former times. Simon and Madge watched over her by day
and by night with a sort of stern solicitude. The poor child
yielded to their wishes, without a remark or a complaint.
Did she perceive that they acted with a view to her interest?
Probably she did. And on her part, she seemed to watch over others,
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: might have watched it, to edification, he was positively rather
liked than not. He was a dim secondary social success - and all
with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere
surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this popping of their
corks - just as his gestures of response were the extravagant
shadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some game
of OMBRES CHINOISES. He projected himself all day, in thought,
straight over the bristling line of hard unconscious heads and into
the other, the real, the waiting life; the life that, as soon as he
had heard behind him the click of his great house-door, began for
him, on the jolly corner, as beguilingly as the slow opening bars
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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 Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: could lay claim to little share. The great hills played a concert
among themselves, each contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
Little Joe's face brightened at once.
"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that
strange man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad
of it!"
"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the
fire go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of
lime are not spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I
shall feel like tossing him into the furnace!"
With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the
The Snow Image |
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 To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: tradesmen served him without a word. The slight-
est allusion to his clothing had the power to puzzle
and frighten especially, as if it were something
utterly unwarranted and incomprehensible.
In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his
sailcloth suit saturated almost to the stiffness of
sheet-iron, with its surface flowing with water.
When the weather was too bad, he retreated under
the tiny porch, and, standing close against the
door, looked at his spade left planted in the middle
of the yard. The ground was so much dug up all
To-morrow |
