| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: her so far failed her. She was not able to think beyond Folkestone, save
occasionally, and that with a feeling that it should not be made so
difficult to do a kind and helpful thing.
At a quarter before three the train eased down. In the same proportion
Sara Lee's pulse went up. A long period of crawling along, a stop or
two, but no resultant opening of the doors; and at last, in a cold rain
and a howling wind from the channel, the little seaport city.
More officers than she had suspected, a few women, got out. The latter
Sara Lee's experience on the steamer enabled her to place; buyers mostly,
and Americans, on their way to Paris, blockade or no blockade, because
the American woman must be well and smartly gowned and hatted. A man
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: this father of wolves; then, making no sound, he sprang straight at my
throat.
"I saw him, and whirling the Watcher aloft, I smote with all my
strength. The blow met him in mid-air; it fell full on his chest and
struck him backwards to the earth. But there he would not say, for,
rising before I could smite again, once more he sprang at me. This
time I leaped aside and struck downwards, and the blow fell upon his
right leg and broke it, so that he could spring no more. Yet he ran at
me on three feet, and, though the club fell on his side, he seized me
with his teeth, biting through that leather bag, which was wound about
my middle, into the flesh behind. Then I yelled with pain and rage,
Nada the Lily |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: void; it was his presence, her presence, their common presence,
that had made the indispensable medium. If anything was wrong
everything was - her silence spoiled the tune.
Then when three months were gone he felt so lonely that he went
back; reflecting that as they had been his best society for years
his Dead perhaps wouldn't let him forsake them without doing
something more for him. They stood there, as he had left them, in
their tall radiance, the bright cluster that had already made him,
on occasions when he was willing to compare small things with
great, liken them to a group of sea-lights on the edge of the ocean
of life. It was a relief to him, after a while, as he sat there,
|
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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: uncle's scheme was disapproved by Mr. Casaubon, and this made it seem
all the more opportune that a fresh understanding should be begun,
so that instead of Will's starting penniless and accepting the first
function that offered itself, he should find himself in possession
of a rightful income which should be paid by her husband during
his life, and, by an immediate alteration of the will, should
be secured at his death. The vision of all this as what ought
to be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of daylight,
waking her from her previous stupidity and incurious self-absorbed
ignorance about her husband's relation to others. Will Ladislaw
had refused Mr. Casaubon's future aid on a ground that no longer
Middlemarch |
