| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: asked me a bit ago - what's doing in the city? Oh,
there's a roof-garden or two just opened, twelve
blocks up."
I crossed a crow's-foot of street-car tracks, and
skirted the edge of an umbrageous park. An
artificial Diana, gilded, heroic, poised, wind-ruled,
on the tower, shimmered in the clear light of her
namesake in the sky. Along came my poet, hurry-
ing, hatted, haired, emitting dactyls, spondees and
dactylis. I seized him.
"Bill," said I (in the magazine he is Cleon), "give
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: obliterated herself, only allowing, from time to time, her
pretty, questioning eyes to meet his. In the meantime she
retired within herself. She surrounded herself with books. Her
taste was of the delicacy of point lace. She knew her Austin
Dobson by heart. She read poems, essays, the ideas of the
seminary at Marysville persisting in her mind. "Marius the
Epicurean," "The Essays of Elia," "Sesame and Lilies," "The
Stones of Venice," and the little toy magazines, full of the
flaccid banalities of the "Minor Poets," were continually in her
hands.
When Presley had appeared on Los Muertos, she had welcomed his
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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 Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: Father Sergius might not hear him, but his words were incisive
and angry.
'Be off, be off! He has blessed you, and what more do you want?
Get along with you, or I'll wring your necks! Move on there! Get
along, you old woman with your dirty leg-bands! Go, go! Where
are you shoving to? You've been told that it is finished.
To-morrow will be as God wills, but for to-day he has finished!'
'Father! Only let my eyes have a glimpse of his dear face!' said
an old woman.
'I'll glimpse you! Where are you shoving to?'
Father Sergius noticed that the merchant seemed to be acting
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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 Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: in his country, in a class all by myself. I mean an
hereditary king, not a mere elected head of a state.
I was brought there to rule by an agency as remote
from the people and as inscrutable almost to them
as the Grace of God.
And like a member of a dynasty, feeling a semi-
mystical bond with the dead, I was profoundly
shocked by my immediate predecessor.
That man had been in all essentials but his age
just such another man as myself. Yet the end of
his life was a complete act of treason, the betrayal
The Shadow Line |
