| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: how such an absurd suspicion should occur to her, and indignantly
answered for each party's perfectly knowing their situation.
"Mrs Clay," said she, warmly, "never forgets who she is;
and as I am rather better acquainted with her sentiments than you can be,
I can assure you, that upon the subject of marriage they are
particularly nice, and that she reprobates all inequality of condition
and rank more strongly than most people. And as to my father,
I really should not have thought that he, who has kept himself single
so long for our sakes, need be suspected now. If Mrs Clay were
a very beautiful woman, I grant you, it might be wrong to have her
so much with me; not that anything in the world, I am sure,
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: to his greatness as a leader. All that can be affirmed is, that on
no other day of his short and glorious career was Lord Nelson more
splendidly true to his genius and to his country's fortune.
XLVIII.
And yet the fact remains that, had the wind failed and the fleet
lost steerage way, or, worse still, had it been taken aback from
the eastward, with its leaders within short range of the enemy's
guns, nothing, it seems, could have saved the headmost ships from
capture or destruction. No skill of a great sea officer would have
availed in such a contingency. Lord Nelson was more than that, and
his genius would have remained undiminished by defeat. But
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: I was a child of the shining meadow,
I was a sister of the sky.
There in the windy flood of morning
Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.
Other Men
When I talk with other men
I always think of you --
Your words are keener than their words,
And they are gentler, too.
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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 The Jolly Corner by Henry James: the prolonged side; it failed him considerably in the central
shades and the parts at the back. But if he sometimes, on his
rounds, was glad of his optical reach, so none the less often the
rear of the house affected him as the very jungle of his prey. The
place was there more subdivided; a large "extension" in particular,
where small rooms for servants had been multiplied, abounded in
nooks and corners, in closets and passages, in the ramifications
especially of an ample back staircase over which he leaned, many a
time, to look far down - not deterred from his gravity even while
aware that he might, for a spectator, have figured some solemn
simpleton playing at hide-and-seek. Outside in fact he might
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