| 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: the nursery-window there grew a Pride of China Tree, and it filled
all the window with small, green, moving leaves--''
Then Bessie Bell just let the lady draw her up close, and she leaned
up against the lady.
She felt so happy now, for she knew she had found the Wisest Woman
in the world, for this lady knew the things that little girls only
could remember. If she had thought about it she would have told the
lady about the tiny apple-trees with the very, very small apples on
them, and other rows of apple-trees over those, and other rows on
top of those, and on top of all a row of big round red apples.
Then the lady might have said: Yes, there were apple-trees like that
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: view as the end chiefly aimed at, and all the private injuries that were
done by the putting it in execution must be put to the account of the
public benefit.
It is doubtful to this day whether, in the whole, it contributed
anything to the stop of the infection; and indeed I cannot say it did, for
nothing could run with greater fury and rage than the infection did
when it was in its chief violence, though the houses infected were shut
up as exactly and as effectually as it was possible. Certain it is that if
all the infected persons were effectually shut in, no sound person
could have been infected by them, because they could not have come
near them. But the case was this (and I shall only touch it here):
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: attack, threw up the man's gun, and saved me.' So my adorer was
evidently a republican! In 1831, after I came to lodge in this house,
I found him, one day, leaning with his back against the wall of it; he
seemed pleased with my disasters; possibly he may have thought they
drew us nearer together. But after the affair of Saint-Merri I saw him
no more; he was killed there. The evening before the funeral of
General Lamarque, I had gone out on foot with my son, and my
republican accompanied us, sometimes behind, sometimes in front, from
the Madeleine to the Passage des Panoramas, where I was going."
"Is that all?" asked the marquise.
"Yes, all," replied the princess. "Except that on the morning Saint-
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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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: with farms, and woodlands, and purple heath above, would have been
steep cliffs of sand and clay, just like those you see at
Bournemouth now; and--what would have spoilt somewhat the beauty
of the sight--along the shores there would have floated, at least
in winter, great blocks and floes of ice, such as you might have
seen in the tideway at King's Lynn the winter before last,
growling and crashing, grubbing and ploughing the sand, and the
gravel, and the mud, and sweeping them away into seas towards the
North, which are now all fruitful land. That may seem to you like
a dream: yet it is true; and some day, when we have another talk
with Madam How, I will show even a child like you that it was
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