| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: out and he stood through the second act.
When he returned to his hotel he examined
the new directory, and found Miss Burgoyne's
address still given as off Bedford Square,
though at a new number. He remembered that,
in so far as she had been brought up at all,
she had been brought up in Bloomsbury.
Her father and mother played in the
provinces most of the year, and she was left a
great deal in the care of an old aunt who was
crippled by rheumatism and who had had to
Alexander's Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: you, sixty thousand a day is a pretty heavy contract for those old
people. If they were a mind to allow it, they wouldn't ever have
anything to do, year in and year out, but stand up and be hugged
and wept on thirty-two hours in the twenty-four. They would be
tired out and as wet as muskrats all the time. What would heaven
be, to THEM? It would be a mighty good place to get out of - you
know that, yourself. Those are kind and gentle old Jews, but they
ain't any fonder of kissing the emotional highlights of Brooklyn
than you be. You mark my words, Mr. T.'s endearments are going to
be declined, with thanks. There are limits to the privileges of
the elect, even in heaven. Why, if Adam was to show himself to
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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 Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: Blandureaus. Chesnel's successor, the du Roncerets' man, had just
fallen into a snare set by the old judge; the truth was out, he knew
the secret.
"It is lucky that we spoke to you about the matter, my dear master,"
said Camusot, "or you might have given up all hope of seating your son
on the bench or of marrying him to Mlle. Blandureau."
"But it is no question of my son, nor of his marriage," said the Vice-
President; "we are talking of young Comte d'Esgrignon. Is he or is he
not guilty?"
"It seems that Chesnel deposited the amount to meet the bill with Mme.
du Croisier," said Michu, "and a crime has been made of a mere
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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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: her cargo of firewood -- at the head, I say, of this dilapidated
wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the
base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many
languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass -- here,
with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening
prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious
edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during
precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or
droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with
the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally,
and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of
The Scarlet Letter |
