| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to
contend, and, considering, all things, a stouter man than he
would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would
have despaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability
and perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit like a
supple-jackÄyielding, but tough; though he bent, he never broke;
and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the
moment it was away--jerk!--he was as erect, and carried his
head as high as ever.
To have taken the field openly against his rival would have
been madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours,
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: artificial state, consents to this arrangement. These factory
girls from Lowell shall mate themselves with the pride of
drawing-rooms and literary circles, the bluebells in fashion's
nosegay, the Sapphos, and Montagues, and Nortons of the age.
Other modes of intellect bring together as strange companies.
Silk-gowned professor of languages, give your arm to this sturdy
blacksmith, and deem yourself honored by the conjunction, though
you behold him grimy from the anvil. All varieties of human
speech are like his mother tongue to this rare man.
Indiscriminately let those take their places, of whatever rank
they come, who possess the kingly gifts to lead armies or to sway
Mosses From An Old Manse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: therefore produce practically the same version of Brynhild. Thus
on the second evening of The Ring we see Brynhild in the
character of the truth-divining instinct in religion, cast into
an enchanted slumber and surrounded by the fires of hell lest she
should overthrow a Church corrupted by its alliance with
government. On the fourth evening, we find her swearing a
malicious lie to gratify her personal jealousy, and then plotting
a treacherous murder with a fool and a scoundrel. In the original
draft of Siegfried's Death, the incongruity is carried still
further by the conclusion, at which the dead Brynhild, restored
to her godhead by Wotan, and again a Valkyrie, carries the slain
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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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: Mme. Willemsens dressed during the children's early breakfast and game
of play; she was coquettish for her darlings; she wished to be
pleasing in their eyes; for them she would fain be in all things
lovely, a gracious vision, with the charm of some sweet perfume of
which one can never have enough.
She was always dressed in time to hear their lessons, which lasted
from ten till three, with an interval at noon for lunch, the three
taking the meal together in the summer-house. After lunch the children
played for an hour, while she--poor woman and happy mother--lay on a
long sofa in the summer-house, so placed that she could look out over
the soft, ever-changing country of Touraine, a land that you learn to
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