| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: You have no idea how he pressed me. I begged him to
excuse me, and get some other partner--but no, not he;
after aspiring to my hand, there was nobody else in the
room he could bear to think of; and it was not that he
wanted merely to dance, he wanted to be with me.
Oh! Such nonsense! I told him he had taken a very unlikely
way to prevail upon me; for, of all things in the world,
I hated fine speeches and compliments; and so--and so then
I found there would be no peace if I did not stand up.
Besides, I thought Mrs. Hughes, who introduced him,
might take it ill if I did not: and your dear brother,
Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: impediment of the speech and hearing of Monsieur Grandet. No one in
Anjou heard better, or could pronounce more crisply the French
language (with an Angevin accent) than the wily old cooper. Some years
earlier, in spite of his shrewdness, he had been taken in by an
Israelite, who in the course of the discussion held his hand behind
his ear to catch sounds, and mangled his meaning so thoroughly in
trying to utter his words that Grandet fell a victim to his humanity
and was compelled to prompt the wily Jew with the words and ideas he
seemed to seek, to complete himself the arguments of the said Jew, to
say what that cursed Jew ought to have said for himself; in short, to
be the Jew instead of being Grandet. When the cooper came out of this
Eugenie Grandet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: night, an' his own wife half dead with a blow he had given her,
an' sat down in this very room,--it was our kitchen then,--an' he
says,' If your man don't git well, ye'll be broke.' An' I says to
him, 'Dan McGaw, if I live twelve months, Tom Grogan'll be a
richer man than he is now.' I was a-sittin' right here when I
said it, wid a rag carpet on this floor, an' hardly any furniture
in the room. He said more things, an' tried to make love to me,
and I let drive and threw him out of me kitchen. Then all me
trouble wid him began; he's done everything to beat me since, and
now maybe, after all, he'll down me. It all come up yisterday
through McGaw meetin' Dr. Mason an' askin' him about me Tom; an'
|
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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife, passing athwart
the front window, with her face turned towards the head of the
street. The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the
idea that, among a thousand such atoms of mortality, her eye must
have detected him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be
somewhat dizzy, when he finds himself by the coal fire of his
lodgings.
So much for the commencement of this long whimwham. After the
initial conception, and the stirring up of the man's sluggish
temperament to put it in practice, the whole matter evolves
itself in a natural train. We may suppose him, as the result of
Twice Told Tales |
