| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: entirely red, this inn produced a most piquant effect in the
landscape, whether by detaching itself from the general background of
the town, or by contrasting its scarlet sides with the verdure of the
surrounding foliage, and the gray-blue tints of the water. This house
owed its name, the Red Inn, to this external decoration, imposed upon
it, no doubt from time immemorial by the caprice of its founder. A
mercantile superstition, natural enough to the different possessors of
the building, far-famed among the sailors of the Rhine, had made them
scrupulous to preserve the title.
Hearing the sound of horses' hoofs, the master of the Red Inn came out
upon the threshold of his door.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: under physical and mental conditions of life which invert every social
condition of the past; the increasingly rapid means of locomotion; the
increasing intercourse between distant races and lands, brought about by
rapid means of intercommunication, widening and changing in every direction
the human horizon--all these produce a society, so complex and so rapidly
altering, that social co-ordination between all its parts is impossible;
and social unrest, and the strife of ideals of faiths, of institutions, and
consequent human suffering is inevitable.
If the ancient guns and agricultural implements which our fathers taught us
to use are valueless in the hands of their descendants, if the samplers our
mothers worked and the stockings they knitted are become superfluous
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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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: remarkable. From early morn until late at night he would, with
indefatigable zeal of body and mind, remain immersed in his sordid
task of copying official documents--never going home, snatching what
sleep he could on tables in the building, and dining with the watchman
on duty. Yet all the while he contrived to remain clean and neat, to
preserve a cheerful expression of countenance, and even to cultivate a
certain elegance of movement. In passing, it may be remarked that his
fellow tchinovniks were a peculiarly plain, unsightly lot, some of
them having faces like badly baked bread, swollen cheeks, receding
chins, and cracked and blistered upper lips. Indeed, not a man of them
was handsome. Also, their tone of voice always contained a note of
Dead Souls |
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 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: more willing assent to invitations on that account.
His readiness, however, in agreeing to dine at the Parsonage,
when the general invitation was at last hazarded,
after many debates and many doubts as to whether it were
worth while, "because Sir Thomas seemed so ill inclined,
and Lady Bertram was so indolent!" proceeded from
good-breeding and goodwill alone, and had nothing to do
with Mr. Crawford, but as being one in an agreeable group:
for it was in the course of that very visit that he first
began to think that any one in the habit of such idle
observations _would_ _have_ _thought_ that Mr. Crawford
Mansfield Park |
