| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: all in the affair, and a central group of heated and distressed
principals. A young man with an inquiring mind and a
considerable knowledge of motor-bicycles fixed on to Grubb and
wanted to argue that the thing could not have happened. Grubb
wass short and inattentive with him, and the young man withdrew
to the back of the crowd, and there told the benevolent old
gentleman in the silk hat that people who went out with machines
they didn't understand had only themselves to blame if things
went wrong.
The old gentleman let him talk for some time, and then remarked,
in a tone of rapturous enjoyment: "Stone deaf," and added, "Nasty
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: I shook them off, and still flattered myself that something or
other might offer for my advantage.
But I was in the wrong place for it. I was not now at Redriff,
where, if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea captain
or other might have talked with me upon the honourable terms
of matrimony; but I was at the Bath, where men find a mistress
sometimes, but very rarely look for a wife; and consequently
all the particular acquaintances a woman can expect to make
there must have some tendency that way.
I had spent the first season well enough; for though I had
contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to
Moll Flanders |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: evil, which was the disease; but if there had been no disease, there would
have been no need of a remedy. Is not this the nature of the good--to be
loved by us who are placed between the two, because of the evil? but there
is no use in the good for its own sake.
I suppose not.
Then the final principle of friendship, in which all other friendships
terminated, those, I mean, which are relatively dear and for the sake of
something else, is of another and a different nature from them. For they
are called dear because of another dear or friend. But with the true
friend or dear, the case is quite the reverse; for that is proved to be
dear because of the hated, and if the hated were away it would be no longer
Lysis |
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 Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: Mrs. Gordon rang the bell, and when Michael answered the summons,
she attended him to the street door, where she instructed him to
call upon Mrs. Redburn, and also to inquire of the grocer at the
corner, and of her neighbors, what sort of a person she was. The
lady returned to the sitting-room when he had gone, and asked
Katy a great many questions about herself and her mother, and
thus nearly an hour was consumed, at the end of which time
Michael returned. Katy had answered all the lady's questions
fairly, though without betraying her family history, which her
mother had cautioned her to keep to herself, that she was
prepared to receive a favorable report from her man.
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