| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: was in dress, for he had entertained the notion of visiting a
theatre. But the great city was new to him; he had gone from a
provincial school to a military college, and thence direct to the
Eastern Empire; and he promised himself a variety of delights in
this world for exploration. Swinging his cane, he took his way
westward. It was a mild evening, already dark, and now and then
threatening rain. The succession of faces in the lamplight stirred
the Lieutenant's imagination; and it seemed to him as if he could
walk for ever in that stimulating city atmosphere and surrounded by
the mystery of four million private lives. He glanced at the
houses, and marvelled what was passing behind those warmly-lighted
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: thought which laughs. For that great procession of the UNLOVED,
who not only wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the
locks of brown or gray, - under the snowy cap, under the chilling
turban, - hide it even from themselves, - perhaps never know they
wear it, though it kills them, - there is no depth of tenderness in
my nature that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere, - somewhere, -
love is in store for them, - the universe must not be allowed to
fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small, half-
unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to
recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear
sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their God-
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: marvellous escape from being dragged into the inquiry which
followed it, through the accident of their having parted just
before under the influence of Marty South's letter--the tiny
instrument of a cause deep in nature.
Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the
fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life that she should not
have found a native grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in
the estate, which, after her death, passed to a relative of her
husband's--one who knew not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be
to blot out every vestige of her.
On a certain day in February--the cheerful day of St. Valentine,
The Woodlanders |
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 The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: reason to congratulate himself upon having compelled the youthful
genius of his son to forsake its natural bent. He fared like the
school-boy who attempts to stop with his finger the spout of a
water cistern, while the stream, exasperated at this compression,
escapes by a thousand uncalculated spurts, and wets him all over
for his pains. Even so fared the senior Tinto, when his hopeful
apprentice not only exhausted all the chalk in making sketches
upon the shopboard, but even executed several caricatures of his
father's best customers, who began loudly to murmur, that it was
too hard to have their persons deformed by the vestments of the
father, and to be at the same time turned into ridicule by the
The Bride of Lammermoor |
