| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: GOVERNOUR.
Away with him! take hence the fool you came for.
HODGE.
Aye, sir, and I'll leave the greater fool with you.
MESSENGER.
Farewell, Bononians. Come, friend, a long with me.
HODGE.
My friend, afore; my Lordship will follow thee.
[Exit.]
GOVERNOUR.
Well, Mantua, since by thee the Earl is lost,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: size in its various aspects. But Nature, who has no doctrinaire
ideas, may equally apply it to concentration. A developing thing
may expand in any given way or form. Now, it is a scientific law
that increase implies gain and loss of various kinds; what a thing
gains in one direction it may lose in another. May it not be that
Mother Nature may deliberately encourage decrease as well as
increase--that it may be an axiom that what is gained in
concentration is lost in size? Take, for instance, monsters that
tradition has accepted and localised, such as the Worm of Lambton or
that of Spindleston Heugh. If such a creature were, by its own
process of metabolism, to change much of its bulk for intellectual
Lair of the White Worm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: and he might imagine, from my father's behaviour, from his
indolence and the little attention he has ever seemed to give to
what was going forward in his family, that HE would do as
little, and think as little about it, as any father could do, in such
a matter."
"But can you think that Lydia is so lost to everything but love
of him as to consent to live with him on any terms other than
marriage?"
"It does seem, and it is most shocking indeed," replied Elizabeth,
with tears in her eyes, "that a sister's sense of decency and
virtue in such a point should admit of doubt. But, really, I
Pride and Prejudice |
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 Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "It's up that tight I can't move it, and I didn't like to ask for
help until I spoke to you."
It was useless to dissemble; Mary Anne knew now as well as I did
that the ladder had no business to be there. I did the best I
could, however. I put her on the defensive at once.
"Then you didn't lock the laundry last night?"
"I locked it tight, and put the key in the kitchen on its nail."
"Very well, then you forgot a window."
Mary Anne hesitated.
"Yes'm," she said at last. "I thought I locked them all, but
there was one open this morning."
The Circular Staircase |
