| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: one sole being and find in a single word, a single look, an influence
so weighty to bear, of so luminous a light, so penetrating a sound,
that he succumbs and kneels before it. The most real of all splendors
are not in outward things, they are within us. A single secret of
science is a realm of wonders to the man of learning. Do the trumpets
of Power, the jewels of Wealth, the music of Joy, or a vast concourse
of people attend his mental festival? No, he finds his glory in some
dim retreat where, perchance, a pallid suffering man whispers a single
word into his ear; that word, like a torch lighted in a mine, reveals
to him a Science. All human ideas, arrayed in every attractive form
which Mystery can invent surrounded a blind man seated in a wayside
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: without that curious falling away of the r's that flavoured even
her gravest observations with an unjust faint aroma of absurdity.
She wrote with a thin pen in a rounded boyish handwriting. She
italicized with slashes of the pen.
He held this letter in both hands between his knees, and
considered it now with an expression that brought his eyebrows
forward until they almost met, and that tucked in the corners of
his mouth.
"My dear Bishop," it began.
"I keep thinking and thinking and thinking of that wonderful
service, of the wonderful, wonderful things you said, and the
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: Agatha, not studious, and apt to shiver in winter, began to break
Rule No. 17 with increasing frequency. Rule No. 17 forbade the
students to enter the kitchen, or in any way to disturb the
servants in the discharge of their duties. Agatha broke it
because she was fond of making toffee, of eating it, of a good
fire, of doing any forbidden thing, and of the admiration with
which the servants listened to her ventriloquial and musical
feats. Gertrude accompanied her because she too liked toffee, and
because she plumed herself on her condescension to her inferiors.
Jane went because her two friends went, and the spirit of
adventure, the force of example, and the love of toffee often
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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 The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: without haste, and on the landing in the diffused light from the
ground-glass skylight there appeared, rigid, like an implacable and
obscure fate, the awful Therese - waiting for her sister. The
heavy ends of a big black shawl thrown over her head hung massively
in biblical folds. With a faint cry of dismay Dona Rita stopped
just within my room.
The two women faced each other for a few moments silently. Therese
spoke first. There was no austerity in her tone. Her voice was as
usual, pertinacious, unfeeling, with a slight plaint in it;
terrible in its unchanged purpose.
"I have been standing here before this door all night," she said.
The Arrow of Gold |
