| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: LEFT HAND.
1st. A reddish-yellow toadstone. 2nd. A heavy ring enamelled in
colours, and bearing a jacynth. 3rd. An amethystine sapphire.
4th. A polished ruby, surrounded by diamonds. 5th. The engraved
ring of an abbess. 6th. A gloomy intaglio; &c. &c.
Beyond this rather quaint array of stone and metal Mrs. Swancourt
wore no ornament whatever.
Elfride had been favourably impressed with Mrs. Troyton at their
meeting about two months earlier; but to be pleased with a woman
as a momentary acquaintance was different from being taken with
her as a stepmother. However, the suspension of feeling was but
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: One day he and another gentleman took our cab; they stopped at a shop
in R---- Street, and while his friend went in he stood at the door.
A little ahead of us on the other side of the street
a cart with two very fine horses was standing before some wine vaults;
the carter was not with them, and I cannot tell how long
they had been standing, but they seemed to think they had waited long enough,
and began to move off. Before they had gone many paces
the carter came running out and caught them. He seemed furious
at their having moved, and with whip and rein punished them brutally,
even beating them about the head. Our gentleman saw it all,
and stepping quickly across the street, said in a decided voice:
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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 The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: fretfully by men who have been more or less hungry for two
or three years on end.
I find, instead of an urgent desire to alter this or that at
once, to-morrow, in the political complexion of the country,
a general desire to do the best that can be done with things
as they are, a general fear of further upheaval of any kind, in
fact a general acquiescence in the present state of affairs
politically, in the hope of altering the present state of affairs
economically. And this is entirely natural. Everybody,
Communists included, rails bitterly at the inefficiencies of
the present system, but everybody, Anti-Communists
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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 An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: have betrayed me!"
The man and his young wife replied by an indignant gesture, that
brought the color to the old lady's face; perhaps she felt relief,
perhaps she blushed for her suspicions.
"Forgive me!" she said, with a childlike sweetness in her tones. Then,
drawing a gold louis from her pocket, she held it out to the pastry-
cook. "That is the price agreed upon," she added.
There is a kind of want that is felt instinctively by those who know
want. The man and his wife looked at one another, then at the elderly
woman before them, and read the same thoughts in each other's eyes.
That bit of gold was so plainly the last. Her hands shook a little as
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