| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: like a pretty woman." You may imagine whether, after this,
she carried her head less becomingly.
She turned away from the window at last, pressing her hands to her eyes.
"It 's too horrible!" she exclaimed. "I shall go back--I shall go back!"
And she flung herself into a chair before the fire.
"Wait a little, dear child," said the young man softly,
sketching away at his little scraps of paper.
The lady put out her foot; it was very small, and there was an immense
rosette on her slipper. She fixed her eyes for a while on this ornament,
and then she looked at the glowing bed of anthracite coal in the grate.
"Did you ever see anything so hideous as that fire?" she demanded.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: never be yours, O king."
"Ow!" said Dingaan; "this little white ant is making another tunnel,
thinking that he will come up at my back. But what if I put down my
heel and crush you, little white ant? Do you know," he added
confidentially, "that the Boer who mends my guns and whom here we call
'Two-faces,' because he looks towards you Whites with one eye and
towards us Blacks with the other, is still very anxious that I should
kill you? Indeed, when I told him that my spies said that you were to
ride with the Boers, as I had requested that you should be their Tongue,
he answered that unless I promised to give you to the vultures, he would
warn them against coming. So, since I wanted them to come as I had
Marie |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: unless, perhaps, to withdraw from this painful scene, but I feel
that I must--for your father's good--suggest that you should--I
mean if you have any influence over him you ought to exert it now
to make him keep the promise he gave me before he--before he got
into this state."
He observed with discouragement that she seemed not to take any
notice of what he said sitting still with half-closed eyes.
"I trust--" he began again.
"What is the promise you speak of?" abruptly asked Nina, leaving
her seat and moving towards her father.
"Nothing that is not just and proper. He promised to deliver to
Almayer's Folly |
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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: Tlascalan mother, on the shoulder, asking us if we were willing to
descend with him into the hole, and there to dispose of the
treasure.
'Gladly,' I answered, for I was curious to see the place, but the
noble hesitated awhile, though in the end he came with us, to his
ill-fortune.
Then Guatemoc took torches in his hand, and was lowered into the
shaft by a rope. Next came my turn, and down I went, hanging to
the cord like a spider to its thread, and the hole was very deep.
At length I found myself standing by the side of Guatemoc at the
foot of the shaft, round which, as I saw by the light of the torch
Montezuma's Daughter |
