| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: the first wagon stuck fast. I tried for a little while to urge the oxen,
but I soon saw the one span could never pull it up. I went to the other
wagon to loosen that span to join them on in front, but the transport-
rider, who was lying at the back of the wagon, jumped out.
"'They shall bring it up the hill; and if half of them die for it they
shall do it alone,' he said.
"He was not drunk, but in bad temper, for he had been drunk the night
before. He swore at me, and told me to take the whip and help him. We
tried for a little time, then I told him it was no use, they could never do
it. He swore louder and called to the leaders to come on with their whips,
and together they lashed. There was one ox, a black ox, so thin that the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: honest enough fellow, but fell in readily with her forwardness.
He took her to shows, and letters, intercepted by the mother,
showed that between them there had been some premature love
passages. At that time Janet started making weekly payments on a
gold watch to give to this young man at Christmas, a curious and
quite unwarranted expenditure. Perhaps this was the fact around
which some of her fabrications at that time centered. Perhaps it
was this money which became now the amount she was paying to her
father's pensioner, now what she had to send home to her mother,
and, again, her payments upon an imaginary sewing machine. In
this affair, as at other times, the lying was extremely childish,
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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 Emma by Jane Austen: but I was the injured person, injured by her coldness, and I went
away determined that she should make the first advances.--I shall
always congratulate myself that you were not of the Box Hill party.
Had you witnessed my behaviour there, I can hardly suppose you would
ever have thought well of me again. Its effect upon her appears
in the immediate resolution it produced: as soon as she found I
was really gone from Randalls, she closed with the offer of that
officious Mrs. Elton; the whole system of whose treatment of her,
by the bye, has ever filled me with indignation and hatred.
I must not quarrel with a spirit of forbearance which has been
so richly extended towards myself; but, otherwise, I should loudly
Emma |
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 Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Treasure Island |
