| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: do you think he carried us but to that place with the
door?--whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with
the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on
Coutts's, drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I
can't mention, though it's one of the points of my story, but it
was a name at least very well known and often printed. The figure
was stiff; but the signature was good for more than that if it was
only genuine. I took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman
that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does
not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning
and come out with another man's cheque for close upon a hundred
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great
wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. they are not perfect ovals--like the
egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact
end--but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual
confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. to the wingless a more
arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except
shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the--well, the less fashionable of the two, though
this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little
sinister contrast between them. my house was at the very tip of the
egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge
The Great Gatsby |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: out though. The doctor's so good to me and the others too. Gyuri
is good to me when I have done what he wanted. But you see, Mr.
Muller, I am like a prisoner here and that makes me angry. I made
Gyuri let me out nights sometimes."
"You mean he let you out alone, all alone?"
"Yes, of course, for I threatened to tell the doctor everything if
he didn't."
"You wouldn't have dared do that."
"No, that's true," smiled Varna slyly. "But Gyuri was afraid I
might do it, for he isn't always strong enough to frighten me with
his eyes. Those were the hours when I could make him afraid - I
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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 Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: Louis XIV. The floor, evidently modern, was laid in large squares of
white wood bordered with strips of oak. The ceiling, formed of many
oval panels, in each of which Van Huysum had carved a grotesque mask,
had been respected and allowed to keep the brown tones of the native
Dutch oak.
In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table
stood in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were
symmetrically placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there
stood, at the period when this history begins, two glass globes filled
with water, in which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and
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