| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: a house!"
"Here comes the doctor," said the other. "Come, nurse, it is
agreed?"
"Yes, ma'am," was the answer. But all the same, as she went out
she hesitated and looked sharply first at the doctor, and then at
George and his mother. She suspected that something was wrong,
and she meant to find out if she could.
The doctor seated himself in George's office chair, as if to
write a prescription. "The child's condition remains the same,"
he said; "nothing disturbing."
"Doctor," said Madame Dupont, gravely, "from now on, you will be
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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 Talisman by Walter Scott: most sovereign, or most baleful, to the effect of his drugs. It
was three hours after midnight ere El Hakim withdrew from the
royal tent, to one which had been pitched for himself and his
retinue. In his way thither he visited the tent of Sir Kenneth
of the Leopard, in order to see the condition of his first
patient in the Christian camp, old Strauchan, as the knight's
esquire was named. Inquiring there for Sir Kenneth himself, El
Hakim learned on what duty he was employed, and probably this
information led him to Saint George's Mount, where he found him
whom he sought in the disastrous circumstances alluded to in the
last chapter.
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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 The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: Pascal, chaplain of the prison. This priest was not without the
faculty of making prisoners listen to him, and he religiously braved
Tascheron's violence, trying to get in a few words amid the storms of
that powerful nature in convulsion. But this struggle of spiritual
fatherhood against the hurricane of unchained passions, overcame the
poor abbe completely.
"The man has had his paradise here below," said the old man, in his
gentle voice.
Little Madame des Vanneaulx consulted her friends as to whether she
ought to try a visit herself to the criminal. Monsieur des Vanneaulx
talked of offering terms. In his anxiety to recover the money 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 Dracula by Bram Stoker: For if we fail in this our fight he must surely win,
and then where end we? Life is nothings, I heed him not.
But to fail here, is not mere life or death. It is that we become
as him, that we henceforward become foul things of the night
like him, without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies
and the souls of those we love best. To us forever are
the gates of heaven shut, for who shall open them to us again?
We go on for all time abhorred by all, a blot on the face of
God's sunshine, an arrow in the side of Him who died for man.
But we are face to face with duty, and in such case must
we shrink? For me, I say no, but then I am old, and life,
Dracula |
