| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: "From me?"
She bent her head slightly, without looking at him.
"Safer from loving me?"
Her profile did not stir, but he saw a tear overflow
on her lashes and hang in a mesh of her veil.
"Safer from doing irreparable harm. Don't let us be
like all the others!" she protested.
"What others? I don't profess to be different from
my kind. I'm consumed by the same wants and the
same longings."
She glanced at him with a kind of terror, and he saw
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: presses that squirt some of the hardest propositions into Wall Street.
He's just back from buying a railroad, and four or five mines in Mexico.
Bohm represents Christianity in the firm. At Newport they call him the
military attache to Jerusalem. He's the big chap that sat behind me in
the car. He'll marry Kitty as soon as she can get her divorce. Bohm's a
jolly old sort--and I tell you, you old sourbelly, you're letting this
Southern moss grow over you a bit. Hey? What? Yellow rich isn't half
bad, and I'll say it myself, and pretend it's mine; but hang it, old man,
their children won't be worse than lemon-colored, and the grandchildren
will be white!"
"Just in time," I exclaimed, "to take a back seat with their evaporated
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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 Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle
and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers
by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like
the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold,
he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with
his foot for whole hours together.
In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing-
master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings
by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no
little vanity to him on Sundays, to take his station in front of
the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
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 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: had been nothing there, or, at most, with as much recognition as
one gives to an inanimate object, and no more. But now a silence
fell. Heemskirk had thought, all at once: "She will tell him all
about it. She will tell him while she hangs round his neck
laughing." And the sudden desire to annihilate Jasper on the spot
almost deprived him of his senses by its vehemence. He lost the
power of speech, of vision. For a moment he absolutely couldn't
see Jasper. But he heard him inquiring, as of the world at large:
"Am I, then, to conclude that the brig is detained?"
Heemskirk made a recovery in a flush of malignant satisfaction.
"She is. I am going to take her to Makassar in tow."
'Twixt Land & Sea |
