| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: I'll-- See here, Mr. Gale, would you mind having Nell with you
part way when you go home?"
"We'd all be delighted to have her go all the way and make us a
visit," replied Mr. Gale.
"That's fine. And you'll be going soon? Don't take that as if I
wanted to--" Belding paused, for the truth was that he did want
to hurry them off.
"We would have been gone before this, but for you," said Mr. Gale.
"Long ago we gave up hope of--of Richard ever returning. And I
believe, now we're sure he was lost, that we'd do well to go home
at once. You wished us to remain until the heat was broken--till
Desert Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will,
the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth
that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature.
I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my
confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous
ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course,
and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front,
only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue.
No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than
just this attempt to supply, one's self, ALL the nature.
How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: heroic temper, to excite or to console; books of a large design,
shadowing the complexity of that game of consequences to which we
all sit down, the hanger-back not least. But the average sermon
flees the point, disporting itself in that eternity of which we
know, and need to know, so little; avoiding the bright, crowded,
and momentous fields of life where destiny awaits us. Upon the
average book a writer may be silent; he may set it down to his ill-
hap that when his own youth was in the acrid fermentation, he
should have fallen and fed upon the cheerless fields of Obermann.
Yet to Mr. Arnold, who led him to these pastures, he still bears a
grudge. The day is perhaps not far oft when people will begin to
|
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 Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: was unable to put his thoughts in order, and fancied that his too lively
imagination had run away with him.
"Good Heavens!" sighed he. "I have surely a disposition to madness--'tis
dreadfully hot here; my blood boils in my veins and my head is burning like a
coal." And he now remembered the important event of the evening before, how
his head had got jammed in between the iron railings of the hospital. "That's
what it is, no doubt," said he. "I must do something in time: under such
circumstances a Russian bath might do me good. I only wish I were already on
the upper bank"*
*In these Russian (vapor) baths the person extends himself on a bank or form,
and as he gets accustomed to the heat, moves to another higher up towards the
Fairy Tales |
