| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: 'Neither dying nor dead,' I answered lightly. 'If that be all
you may go home again.'
'With you,' he replied, with a grin, 'certainly. And as it
rains, the sooner the better. I must ask you for your sword, I
am afraid.'
'Take it,' I said, with the philosophy which never deserts me.
'But the man will not die.'
'I hope that may avail you,' he answered in a tone I did not
like. 'Left wheel, my friends! To the Chatelet! March!'
'There are worse places,' I said, and resigned myself to fate.
After all, I had been in a prison before, and learned that only
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: some more I-talians."
"They're Chinese," said Trampas.
"That's so," acknowledged the Virginian, with a laugh.
"What's he monkeyin' at now?" muttered Scipio.
"Without cheap foreigners they couldn't afford all this hyeh new
gradin'," the Southerner continued.
"Grading! Can't you tell when a flood's been eating the banks?"
"Why, yes," said the Virginian, sweet as honey. "But 'ain't yu'
heard of the improvements west of Big Timber, all the way to
Missoula, this season? I'm talkin' about them."
"Oh! Talking about them. Yes, I've heard."
The Virginian |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way,
beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at
work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying
to purr--no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.
But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the
afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner
of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep,
the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of
worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it
up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was,
spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the
Through the Looking-Glass |
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: has faded and gone, she thought. We can over-ride her wishes, improve
away her limited, old-fashioned ideas. She recedes further and further
from us. Mockingly she seemed to see her there at the end of the
corridor of years saying, of all incongruous things, "Marry, marry!"
(sitting very upright early in the morning with the birds beginning to
cheep in the garden outside). And one would have to say to her, It has
all gone against your wishes. They're happy like that; I'm happy like
this. Life has changed completely. At that all her being, even her
beauty, became for a moment, dusty and out of date. For a moment Lily,
standing there, with the sun hot on her back, summing up the Rayleys,
triumphed over Mrs Ramsay, who would never know how Paul went to
To the Lighthouse |
