| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: never seen her before. And when at last I sighed and raised myself
upon my arm she turned her face to me--"
He stopped.
"I have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. I have had mother,
sisters, friends, wife, and daughters--all their faces, the play
of their faces, I know. But the face of this girl--it is much more
real to me. I can bring it back into memory so that I see it
again--I could draw it or paint it. And after all--"
He stopped--but I said nothing.
"The face of a dream--the face of a dream. She was beautiful. Not
that beauty which is terrible, cold, and worshipful, like the beauty
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: between us about the biddings, that I'll not interrupt her now.
I'll step homeward, and call another time."
On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again. Grace,
surrounded by a sufficient number of candles to answer all
purposes of self-criticism, was standing before a cheval-glass
that her father had lately bought expressly for her use; she was
bonneted, cloaked, and gloved, and glanced over her shoulder into
the mirror, estimating her aspect. Her face was lit with the
natural elation of a young girl hoping to inaugurate on the morrow
an intimate acquaintance with a new, interesting, and powerful
friend.
The Woodlanders |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: gravel you get sand again, and then gravel again, and then sand
again, till you cannot tell where one fairly begins and the other
ends. Why, here are little dots of gravel, six or eight feet
down, in what looks the solid sand rock, yet the sand must have
been opened somehow to put the gravel in.
You say you have seen that before. You have seen the same curious
twisting of the gravel and sand into each other on the top of
Farley Hill, and in the new cutting on Minley Hill; and, best of
all, in the railway cutting between Ascot and Sunningdale, where
upon the top the white sand and gravel is arranged in red and
brown waves, and festoons, and curlicues, almost like Prince of
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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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: Chatham with his rudder splutted, and a man's arm - Moon's that
'ud be - broken at the tiller. "Take this boy aboard an' drown
him," says my Uncle, "and I'll mend your rudder-piece for love."
'What did your Uncle want you drowned for?'said Una.
'That was only his fashion of say-so, same as Mus' Robin. I'd a
foolishness in my head that ships could be builded out of iron. Yes
- iron ships! I'd made me a liddle toy one of iron plates beat out
thin - and she floated a wonder! But my Uncle, bein' a burgess of
Rye, and a shipbuilder, he 'prenticed me to Frankie in the fetchin'
trade, to cure this foolishness.'
'What was the fetchin' trade?' Dan interrupted.
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