| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: transformed into brown, rattling, burry stalks.
We found Russian Peter digging his potatoes. We were glad to go
in and get warm by his kitchen stove and to see his squashes
and Christmas melons, heaped in the storeroom for winter.
As we rode away with the spade, Antonia suggested that we
stop at the prairie-dog-town and dig into one of the holes.
We could find out whether they ran straight down, or were horizontal,
like mole-holes; whether they had underground connections;
whether the owls had nests down there, lined with feathers.
We might get some puppies, or owl eggs, or snakeskins.
The dog-town was spread out over perhaps ten acres.
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: displeased at me on this account. Now if there be such a person among
you,--mind, I do not say that there is,--to him I may fairly reply: My
friend, I am a man, and like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and
not 'of wood or stone,' as Homer says; and I have a family, yes, and sons,
O Athenians, three in number, one almost a man, and two others who are
still young; and yet I will not bring any of them hither in order to
petition you for an acquittal. And why not? Not from any self-assertion
or want of respect for you. Whether I am or am not afraid of death is
another question, of which I will not now speak. But, having regard to
public opinion, I feel that such conduct would be discreditable to myself,
and to you, and to the whole state. One who has reached my years, and who
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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 The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: are related through the Beauseants; the father of the present Vicomte
married a Mlle. de Champignelles of the older branch. But though the
Vicomtesse de Beauseant is supposed to be a descendant of the House of
Burgundy, you can understand that we could not admit a wife separated
from her husband into our society here. We are foolish enough still to
cling to these old-fashioned ideas. There was the less excuse for the
Vicomtesse, because M. de Beauseant is a well-bred man of the world,
who would have been quite ready to listen to reason. But his wife is
quite mad----" and so forth and so forth.
M. de Nueil, still listening to the speaker's voice, gathered nothing
of the sense of the words; his brain was too full of thick-coming
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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 Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: We feel the millions of humanity beneath us,--
The warm millions, moving under the roofs,
Consumed by their own desires;
Preparing food,
Sobbing alone in a garret,
With burning eyes bending over a needle,
Aimlessly reading the evening paper,
Dancing in the naked light of the café,
Laying out the dead,
Bringing a child to birth--
The sorrow, the torpor, the bitterness, the frail joy
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