| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: eyes could pierce the gloom, the heads of that enormous crowd extended.
"I will own that I am still by no means indurated. to the peculiar effect
of the Selenite appearance, and to find myself, as it were, adrift on this
broad sea of excited entomology was by no means agreeable. Just for a
space I had something very like what I should imagine people mean when
they speak of the 'horrors.' It had come to me before in these lunar
caverns, when on occasion I have found myself weaponless and with an
undefended back, amidst a crowd of these Selenites, but never quite so
vividly. It is, of course, as absolutely irrational a feeling as one could
well have, and I hope gradually to subdue it. But just for a moment, as I
swept forward into the welter of the vast crowd, it was only by gripping
The First Men In The Moon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: it caused people to stumble. A narrow hall separated the kitchen from
the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near
the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white
wainscoting. An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered
with a pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow
marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV. style, stood a tapestry armchair. The
clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty,
as it was on a lower level than the garden.
On the first floor was Madame's bed-chamber, a large room papered in a
flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur dressed in the
costume of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller room, in which
A Simple Soul |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: pepper-box tower neatly whitewashed, which rose out of a
huge mass of broken stone. "And here, I suppose, is the
capital of the kingdom over which the Wolfburghs now
reign feudal lords?"
Clara found herself against her will looking curiously at
the forge, the dirty shop, the tiny bier-halle, and a
half a dozen huts, out of which swarmed a few old women
and children.
"Where are the men of this village?" Jean demanded of the
station master, a stout old man with a pipe in his mouth.
"Gone to America, for the most part," he said, with a
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: piece. "I'm bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these
lines, as fastidious--what you call here difficile."
Little Bilham tossed up his chin. "Of course she's difficile--on
any lines! What else in the world ARE our Mamies--the real, the
right ones?"
"I see, I see," our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive
wisdom he had ended by so richly extracting. "Mamie is one of the
real and the right."
"The very thing itself."
"And what it comes to then," Strether went on, "is that poor awful
Chad is simply too good for her."
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