| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: very mischievous and cruel sort of abortion which is called bringing
up a child in the way it should go. Now nobody knows the way a child
should go. All the ways discovered so far lead to the horrors of our
existing civilizations, described quite justifiably by Ruskin as heaps
of agonizing human maggots, struggling with one another for scraps of
food. Pious fraud is an attempt to pervert that precious and sacred
thing the child's conscience into an instrument of our own
convenience, and to use that wonderful and terrible power called Shame
to grind our own axe. It is the sin of stealing fire from the altar:
a sin so impudently practised by popes, parents, and pedagogues, that
one can hardly expect the nurserymaids to see any harm in stealing a
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: situation with a certain detachment; now he saw that it threatened
the peace of two households.
"It's a warning, all right."
"Yes. Undoubtedly."
"You don't recognize the name Bassett?"
"No. I've tried, of course."
The result of some indecision was finally that Elizabeth should not
be told anything until they were ready to tell it all. And in the
end a certain resentment that she had become involved in an unhappy
situation died in Walter Wheeler before Dick's white face and
sunken eyes.
The Breaking Point |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: She ran and hasted after him that fled,
Through frost and snow, through brier, bush and thorn,
And sent her cries on message her before,
That reached not him till he had reached the shore.
XL
"Oh thou that leav'st but half behind," quoth she,
"Of my poor heart, and half with thee dost carry,
Oh take this part, or render that to me,
Else kill them both at once, ah tarry, tarry:
Hear my last words, no parting kiss of thee
I crave, for some more fit with thee to marry
|
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 Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: many in this day, when old order, passing, giveth place to new;
beautiful, talented, critical, unsatisfied, tired of the world at
twenty-four. For the moment the life and people of the Divide
interested her. She was there but a week; perhaps had she stayed
longer, that inexorable ennui which travels faster even than the
Vestibule Limited would have overtaken her. The week she
tarried there was the week that Eric Hermannson was helping Jerry
Lockhart thresh; a week earlier or a week later, and there would
have been no story to write.
It was on Thursday and they were to leave on Saturday. Wyllis
and his sister were sitting on the wide piazza of the ranchhouse,
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
