| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: it for a week, and her husband, profiting by the example so
signally given him of the fatal effect of a want of character, left
the letter, the drop too much, unanswered. The letter, an
incredible one, addressed by Saltram to Wimbledon during a stay
with the Pudneys at Ramsgate, was the central feature of the
incident, which, however, had many features, each more painful than
whichever other we compared it with. The Pudneys had behaved
shockingly, but that was no excuse. Base ingratitude, gross
indecency--one had one's choice only of such formulas as that the
more they fitted the less they gave one rest. These are dead aches
now, and I am under no obligation, thank heaven, to be definite
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: my sister's anxiety?"
"I have, madam," answered the Paduan scholar; "but there is still
a previous inquiry. Have you the courage to behold with your own
eyes what the Cavaliero Philippo Forester is now doing? or will
you take it on my report?"
"That question my sister must answer for herself," said Lady
Bothwell.
"With my own eyes will I endure to see whatever you have power to
show me," said Lady Forester, with the same determined spirit
which had stimulated her since her resolution was taken upon this
subject.
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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 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: "I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I'll go."
Rising early next day she walked to the hill-town
called Shaston, and there took advantage of a van which
twice in the week ran from Shaston eastward to
Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish in
which the vague and mysterious Mrs d'Urberville had her
residence.
Tess Durbeyfield's route on this memorable morning lay
amid the north-eastern undulations of the Vale in which
she had been born, and in which her life had unfolded.
The Vale of Blackmoor was to her the world, and its
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
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 Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: learned by experience how the pure air and the blue sky of the lovely
valley calmed the excitements and soothed the morbid griefs of the
diseased mind, and what beneficial effect the life at Clochegourde had
upon the health of her children, she opposed her mother's desire that
she should leave it with reasons which the overbearing woman, who was
less grieved than mortified by her daughter's bad marriage, vigorously
combated.
Henriette saw that the duchess cared little for Jacques and Madeleine,
--a terrible discovery! Like all domineering mothers who expect to
continue the same authority over their married daughters that they
maintained when they were girls, the duchess brooked no opposition;
The Lily of the Valley |
