| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: family in the handsomest house in the rue Royale, and studying the
principles of banking with the prodigious activity and intelligence of
a native of Provence.
This double operation of Dumay's was worth a fortune to the house of
Mignon. The colonel purchased the villa at Ingouville and rewarded his
agent with the gift of a modest little house in the rue Royale. The
poor toiler had brought back from New York, together with his cottons,
a pretty little wife, attracted it would seem by his French nature.
Miss Grummer was worth about four thousand dollars (twenty thousand
francs), which sum Dumay placed with his colonel, to whom he now
became an alter ego. In a short time he learned to keep his patron's
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: under protest.
'And you can go, Sim,' said the locksmith.
Mr Tappertit obeyed again, still under protest; and betaking
himself to the workshop, began seriously to fear that he might find
it necessary to poison his master, before his time was out.
In the meantime, Edward returned suitable replies to Mrs Varden's
courtesies, and that lady brightened up very much; so that when he
accepted a dish of tea from the fair hands of Dolly, she was
perfectly agreeable.
'I am sure if there's anything we can do,--Varden, or I, or Dolly
either,--to serve you, sir, at any time, you have only to say it,
Barnaby Rudge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: mythical, Italian house, whose daughters, scattered about English
drawing-rooms in the nineteenth century, had lisped so charmingly, had
stormed so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and her temper came
from them, and not from the sluggish English, or the cold Scotch; but more
profoundly, she ruminated the other problem, of rich and poor, and the
things she saw with her own eyes, weekly, daily, here or in London, when
she visited this widow, or that struggling wife in person with a bag on
her arm, and a note-book and pencil with which she wrote down in columns
carefully ruled for the purpose wages and spendings, employment and
unemployment, in the hope that thus she would cease to be a private woman
whose charity was half a sop to her own indignation, half a relief to her
To the Lighthouse |
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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: has seen Malays when terrified turn pale and shake; and Mr. Brough Smyth
states that a native Australian "being on one occasion much frightened,
showed a complexion as nearly approaching to what we call paleness,
as can well be conceived in the case of a very black man." Mr. Dyson Lacy
has seen extreme fear shown in an Australian, by a nervous twitching of
the hands, feet, and lips; and by the perspiration standing on the skin.
Many savages do not repress the signs of fear so much as Europeans;
and they often tremble greatly. With the Kafir, Gaika says, in his
rather quaint English, the shaking "of the body is much experienced,
and the eyes are widely open." With savages, the sphincter muscles
are often relaxed, just as may be observed in much frightened dogs,
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
