| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: having them accepted.
A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one.
Troubles soon arose. Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually
withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all
the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence,
and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter.
He thought it a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with
more tempered and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one.
Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind,
to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen
in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: "And well he deserves to be so," said Sir Dugald Dalgetty, who
came up to them at that moment with a prodigious addition of
acquired importance, "since he shot my good horse at the time
that I was offering him honourable quarter, which, I must needs
say, was done more like an ignorant Highland cateran, who has not
sense enough to erect a sconce for the protection of his old
hurley-house of a castle, than like a soldier of worth and
quality."
"Are we to condole with you then," said Lord Menteith, "upon the
loss of the famed Gustavus?"
"Even so, my lord," answered the soldier, with a deep sigh, "DIEM
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: here?' The coal replied: 'I fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if
I had not escaped by sheer force, my death would have been certain,--I
should have been burnt to ashes.' The bean said: 'I too have escaped
with a whole skin, but if the old woman had got me into the pan, I
should have been made into broth without any mercy, like my comrades.'
'And would a better fate have fallen to my lot?' said the straw. 'The
old woman has destroyed all my brethren in fire and smoke; she seized
sixty of them at once, and took their lives. I luckily slipped through
her fingers.'
'But what are we to do now?' said the coal.
'I think,' answered the bean, 'that as we have so fortunately escaped
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
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 In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield:
|
