| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: it happened, was very rude to them, and gave them notice, a thing
she repented of later, and the ladies let her go, noticing
something wrong and very dissatisfied with her. Then she got a
housemaid's place in a police-officer's house, but stayed there
only three months, for the police officer, a man of fifty, began
to torment her, and once, when he was in a specially enterprising
mood, she fired up, called him "a fool and old devil," and gave
him such a knock in the chest that he fell. She was turned out
for her rudeness. It was useless to look for another situation,
for the time of her confinement was drawing near, so she went to
the house of a village midwife, who also sold wine. The
Resurrection |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: rewarded the good and punished the evil by inevitable laws. It is
something to have warned a young prince, in an age of doctrinal
bigotry and practical atheism, that a living God still existed, and
that his laws were still in force; to have shown him Tartarus
crowded with the souls of wicked monarchs, while a few of kingly
race rested in Elysium, and among them old pagans--Inachus, Cecrops,
Erichthon, Triptolemus, and Sesostris--rewarded for ever for having
done their duty, each according to his light, to the flocks which
the gods had committed to their care. It is something to have
spoken to a prince, in such an age, without servility, and without
etiquette, of the frailties and the dangers which beset arbitrary
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: by the crash of something - glass or china - on the floor.
I struck a fresh match, and found myself in a narrow rear hallway.
Behind me was the door by which I must have come; with a keen desire
to get back to the place I had started from, I opened the door and
attempted to cross the room. I thought I had kept my sense of
direction, but I crashed without warning into what, from the
resulting jangle, was the dining-table, probably laid for dinner.
I cursed my stupidity in getting into such a situation, and I
cursed my nerves for making my hand shake when I tried to strike a
match. The groan had not been repeated.
I braced myself against the table and struck the match sharply
The Man in Lower Ten |
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 Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: looks black at me as if he wanted to cut my throat,
whistles the dog, and off he goes, leaving me to do
the work.' The Fosters, of course, didn't like to
lose the wages the girl earned: Amy used to give all
her money to her mother. But there was in Foster
a very genuine aversion to that match. He con-
tended that the fellow was very good with sheep,
but was not fit for any girl to marry. For one
thing, he used to go along the hedges muttering to
himself like a dam' fool; and then, these foreign-
ers behave very queerly to women sometimes. And
Amy Foster |
