| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: fool, you must e'en suffer me to keep mine."
'This he delivered slowly into the King's angry face! My faith, a
King's jester must be bolder than lions!
'"Now we will judge the matter," said Rahere. "Let these two
brave knights go hang my fool because he warned King Henry
against running after Saxon deer through woods full of Saxons.
'Faith, Brother, if thy Brother, Red William, now among the
Saints as we hope, had been timely warned against a certain arrow
in New Forest, one fool of us four would not be crowned fool of
England this morning. Therefore, hang the fool's fool, knights!"
'Mark the fool's cunning! Rahere had himself given us order to
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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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: Virgin's delivery," said Bianchon to himself, astonished beyond
measure. "If I had caught him holding one of the ropes of the
canopy on Corpus Christi day, it would be a thing to laugh at;
but at this hour, alone, with no one to see--it is surely a thing
to marvel at!"
Bianchon did not wish to seem as though he were spying the head
surgeon of the Hotel-Dieu; he went away. As it happened, Desplein
asked him to dine with him that day, not at his own house, but at
a restaurant. At dessert Bianchon skilfully contrived to talk of
the mass, speaking of it as mummery and a farce.
"A farce," said Desplein, "which has cost Christendom more blood
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: "Look here! all this is about a landlord not a hundred
miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents.
They say he is the most retrogressive man in the county.
I think you must have taught them that word in the `Pioneer.'"
"Oh, that is Keek--an illiterate fellow, you know. Retrogressive, now!
Come, that's capital. He thinks it means destructive: they want
to make me out a destructive, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with
that cheerfulness which is usually sustained by an adversary's ignorance.
"I think he knows the meaning of the word. Here is a sharp stroke
or two. If we had to describe a man who is retrogressive in the
most evil sense of the word--we should say, he is one who would
Middlemarch |
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 Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: hiding for these hundred years?'
Barnaby had been thinking within himself that the smell of the
trodden grass brought back his old days at cricket, when he was a
young boy and played on Chigwell Green. Confused by this sudden
and boisterous address, he stared in a bewildered manner at the
man, and could scarcely say 'What! Hugh!'
'Hugh!' echoed the other; 'ay, Hugh--Maypole Hugh! You remember my
dog? He's alive now, and will know you, I warrant. What, you wear
the colour, do you? Well done! Ha ha ha!'
'You know this young man, I see,' said Lord George.
'Know him, my lord! as well as I know my own right hand. My
Barnaby Rudge |
