| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: improve tempers already overstrained with the expectation of a
crisis too long dragged out. Rain fell during the night, and
continued gently in a misty drizzle after day broke. It was a
situation and an atmosphere ripe for tragedy, and it fell on them
like a clap of thunder out of a sodden sky.
Hughie was cook for the day, and he came chill and stiff-fingered
to his task. Summer as it was, there lay a thin coating of ice
round the edges of the stream, for they had camped in an altitude
of about nine thousand feet. The "King" had wakened in a vile
humor. He had a splitting headache, as was natural under the
circumstances and he had not left in his bottle a single drink to
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: But the chance will be infinitely small of any record having been preserved
of such slow, varying, and insensible changes.
I must now say a few words on the circumstances, favourable, or the
reverse, to man's power of selection. A high degree of variability is
obviously favourable, as freely giving the materials for selection to work
on; not that mere individual differences are not amply sufficient, with
extreme care, to allow of the accumulation of a large amount of
modification in almost any desired direction. But as variations manifestly
useful or pleasing to man appear only occasionally, the chance of their
appearance will be much increased by a large number of individuals being
kept; and hence this comes to be of the highest importance to success. On
On the Origin of Species |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: looked as if it had never been flushed by excess, was in strong
contrast, not only with the Squire's, but with the appearance of the
Raveloe farmers generally--in accordance with a favourite saying
of his own, that "breed was stronger than pasture".
"Miss Nancy's wonderful like what her mother was, though; isn't
she, Kimble?" said the stout lady of that name, looking round for
her husband.
But Doctor Kimble (country apothecaries in old days enjoyed that
title without authority of diploma), being a thin and agile man, was
flitting about the room with his hands in his pockets, making
himself agreeable to his feminine patients, with medical
Silas Marner |
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: by, if he hadn't been lingering there? Doubtless, he had made his
observations when he saw Marner at the door. Anybody might know--
and only look at him--that the weaver was a half-crazy miser. It
was a wonder the pedlar hadn't murdered him; men of that sort, with
rings in their ears, had been known for murderers often and often;
there had been one tried at the 'sizes, not so long ago but what
there were people living who remembered it.
Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Rainbow during one of Mr. Snell's
frequently repeated recitals of his testimony, had treated it
lightly, stating that he himself had bought a pen-knife of the
pedlar, and thought him a merry grinning fellow enough; it was all
Silas Marner |
