| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: with his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement.
"To hell with you and your souls!" he shouted. "Why do you plague me
about souls? Haven't I got enough to worry, and pain, to distract
me already, without thinking of souls?"
He looked so hostile that I thought he was in for another homicidal fit,
so I blew my whistle.
The instant, however, that I did so he became calm, and said apologetically,
"Forgive me, Doctor. I forgot myself. You do not need any help.
I am so worried in my mind that I am apt to be irritable. If you only knew
the problem I have to face, and that I am working out, you would pity,
and tolerate, and pardon me. Pray do not put me in a strait waistcoat.
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: 'Have you observed that very remarkable expression: SOMETHING TO
HIS ADVANTAGE?' enquired Pitman shrewdly.
'You innocent mutton,' said Michael, 'it's the seediest
commonplace in the English language, and only proves the
advertiser is an ass. Let me demolish your house of cards for you
at once. Would Uncle Tim make that blunder in your name?--in
itself, the blunder is delicious, a huge improvement on the gross
reality, and I mean to adopt it in the future; but is it like
Uncle Tim?'
'No, it's not like him,' Pitman admitted. 'But his mind may have
become unhinged at Ballarat.'
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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 House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: We lean unbalanced. The mute last glance between us,
Profoundly searching, opening, asking, yielding,
Is steadily met: our two lives draw together . . .
. . . .'What are you thinking of?'. . . .My first wife's voice
Scattered these ghosts. 'Oh nothing--nothing much--
Just wondering where we'd be two years from now,
And what we might be doing . . . ' And then remorse
Turned sharply in my mind to sudden pity,
And pity to echoed love. And one more evening
Drew to the usual end of sleep and silence.
And, as it is with this, so too with all things.
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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 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: perpetuate in terms of experiencehad become merely consecrations
to their own posterity. Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were
all removed by their very beauty, around which men had swarmed,
from the possibility of contributing anything but a sick heart
and a page of puzzled words to write.
Amory based his loss of faith in help from others on several
sweeping syllogisms. Granted that his generation, however bruised
and decimated from this Victorian war, were the heirs of
progress. Waving aside petty differences of conclusions which,
although they might occasionally cause the deaths of several
millions of young men, might be explained awaysupposing that
This Side of Paradise |
