| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt
her and her goat about two years before? She said she was
unsettled much at that time, but remembered it upon two accounts: -
that ill as she was, she saw the person pitied her; and next, that
her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she had beat him for the
theft; - she had wash'd it, she said, in the brook, and kept it
ever since in her pocket to restore it to him in case she should
ever see him again, which, she added, he had half promised her. As
she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to
let me see it; she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine
leaves, tied round with a tendril; - on opening it, I saw an S.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: living out the last days of a good life, but a scoundrel, who
sold, and still continued in his old age to sell, his conscience.
"Best of all, go and serve," he continued; "the Tsar needs honest
men--and the country," he added. "Well, supposing I and the
others refused to serve, as you are doing? Who would be left?
Here we are, finding fault with the order of things, and yet not
wishing to help the Government."
With a deep sigh Nekhludoff made a low bow, shook the large, bony
hand condescendingly stretched out to him and left the room.
The General shook his head reprovingly, and rubbing his back, he
again went into the drawing-room where the artist was waiting for
Resurrection |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and
neither, after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince
more democratic than anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and
was immensely interested by the fact that their spectacles came
from the same optician.
But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and
his mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was
fascination in the thought that, among the rabble of vulgar
uneducated royalties who overran Europe from Biarritz to the
Engadine, gambling, tangoing, and sponging on no less vulgar
plebeians, they, the unobtrusive and self-respecting Hickses,
|
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 Silas Marner by George Eliot: when I was troubling over poor Bessy Fawkes, and it allays comes
into my head when I'm sorry for folks, and feel as I can't do a
power to help 'em, not if I was to get up i' the middle o' the night--
it comes into my head as Them above has got a deal tenderer heart
nor what I've got--for I can't be anyways better nor Them as made
me; and if anything looks hard to me, it's because there's things I
don't know on; and for the matter o' that, there may be plenty o'
things I don't know on, for it's little as I know--that it is.
And so, while I was thinking o' that, you come into my mind, Master
Marner, and it all come pouring in:--if _I_ felt i' my inside what
was the right and just thing by you, and them as prayed and drawed
Silas Marner |
