| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: disgraced by having him here,--the son of one of my village
peasants,--but now I am to make him my son-in-law! Heavens above
us, are you mad, Elfride?'
'You have seen his letters come to me ever since his first visit,
papa, and you knew they were a sort of--love-letters; and since he
has been here you have let him be alone with me almost entirely;
and you guessed, you must have guessed, what we were thinking of,
and doing, and you didn't stop him. Next to love-making comes
love-winning, and you knew it would come to that, papa.'
The vicar parried this common-sense thrust. 'I know--since you
press me so--I know I did guess some childish attachment might
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: scared. He says:
"Oh, Mars Tom, DON'T! Ef you teches him, we's
gone -- we's gone sho'! I ain't gwine anear him, not
for nothin' in dis worl'. Mars Tom, he's plumb crazy."
Tom whispers and says -- "That's WHY we've got to
do something. If he wasn't crazy I wouldn't give
shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn't hire me
to get out -- now that I've got used to this balloon and
over the scare of being cut loose from the solid ground
-- if he was in his right mind. But it's no good politics,
sailing around like this with a person that's out of his
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: in the neighbourhood, and threatening that my brother should call them
to an account for it when he returned to his habitation.
Then I talked a little upon another foot with them, and asked them
how they could do such things as these in a time of such general
calamity, and, as it were, in the face of God's most dreadful
judgements, when the plague was at their very doors, and, it may be,
in their very houses, and they did not know but that the dead-cart
might stop at their doors in a few hours to carry them to their graves.
I could not perceive that my discourse made much impression upon
them all that while, till it happened that there came two men of the
neighbourhood, hearing of the disturbance, and knowing my brother,
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey: the finesse of the play, but Berne had struck out
--that was enough for them.
Callopy, the famous spiker, who had put many
a player out of the game for weeks at a time,
strode into the batter's place, and he, too, was not
at the moment making any funny remarks. The
Rube delivered a ball that all but hit Callopy fair
on the head. It was the second narrow escape
for him, and the roar he let out showed how he
resented being threatened with a little of his own
medicine. As might have been expected, and
The Redheaded Outfield |
