| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: all my belongings had died out of it, and I knew how it would seem
when Mrs. Todd came back and found her lodger gone. So we die
before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to
their natural end.
I found the little packages on the kitchen table. There was
a quaint West Indian basket which I knew its owner had valued, and
which I had once admired; there was an affecting provision laid
beside it for my seafaring supper, with a neatly tied bunch of
southernwood and a twig of bay, and a little old leather box which
held the coral pin that Nathan Todd brought home to give to poor
Joanna.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: him, he spun with flying arms across Myles's loins, and pitched
with a thud upon the stone pavement, where he lay still,
motionless, while Myles, his face white with passion and his eyes
gleaming, stood glaring around like a young wild-boar beset by
the dogs.
The next moment the silence was broken, and the uproar broke
forth with redoubled violence. The bachelors, leaping from the
benches, came hurrying forward on one side, and Myles's friends
from the other.
"Thou shalt smart for this, Falworth," said one of the older
lads. " Belike thou hast slain him!"
Men of Iron |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: the flower-beds in a garden of about two acres in extent. Seen from
the road, the brick-work harmonized with the fresh flowers and shrubs,
for two centuries had overlaid it with mosses and green and russet
tints. No one could pass through the town without falling in love with
a house with such charming surroundings, so covered with flowers and
mosses to the roof-ridge, where two pigeons of glazed crockery ware
were perched by way of ornament.
M. Blondet possessed an income of about four thousand livres derived
from land, besides the old house in the town. He meant to avenge his
wrongs legitimately enough. He would leave his house, his lands, his
seat on the bench to his son Joseph, and the whole town knew what he
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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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: champagne? The kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour
when all Paris is crowding to profane delights, and in the--well,
in the great temple, as one hears of it, of pleasure?"
"That's just IT, for both of them," Strether insisted--"and all of
a supreme innocence. The Parisian place, the feverish hour, the
putting before her of a hundred francs' worth of food and drink,
which they'll scarcely touch--all that's the dear man's own
romance; the expensive kind, expensive in francs and centimes, in
which he abounds. And the circus afterwards--which is cheaper, but
which he'll find some means of making as dear as possible--that's
also HIS tribute to the ideal. It does for him. He'll see her
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