| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: allow for a margin of error?'
"I only know this," she said steadily. "I can't imagine ever
caring any less. I've never thought about myself very much, but I
do know that. You see, I think I've cared for a long time."
When she had gone he sat in his chair staring ahead of him and
thinking. Yes. She would stick. She had loyalty, loyalty and
patience and a rare humility. It was up to Dick then. And again
he faced the possibility of an opening door into the past, of
crowding memories, of confusion and despair and even actual danger.
And out of that, what?
Habit. That was all he had to depend on. The brain was a thing
The Breaking Point |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: "Oh, Mrs. Westall, how beautiful it was!" Una fixed her with
large limpid eyes. "You believe it all, I suppose?" she asked
with seraphic gravity.
"All--what, my dear child?"
The girl shone on her. "About the higher life--the freer
expansion of the individual--the law of fidelity to one's self,"
she glibly recited.
Mrs. Westall, to her own wonder, blushed a deep and burning
blush.
"My dear Una," she said, "you don't in the least understand what
it's all about!"
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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 Before Adam by Jack London: stuff of my dreams, that had moulded into its being all
the impressions of my life--or of the life of
Big-Tooth, rather, who is my other-self, and not my
real self, but who is so real to me that often I am
unable to tell what age I am living in.
I often wonder about this line of descent. I, the
modern, am incontestably a man; yet I, Big-Tooth, the
primitive, am not a man. Somewhere, and by straight
line of descent, these two parties to my dual
personality were connected. Were the Folk, before
their destruction, in the process of becoming men? And
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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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: Ma'am Mouton nodded, her heart sinking. "Where is Sylves'?"
"He is here, madam."
There appeared Joseph Lascaud, then some men bearing Something.
Louisette put her hands up to her eyes to hide the sight, but
Ma'am Mouton was rigid.
"It was too cold for him," Joseph was saying to almost deaf ears,
"and he took the consumption. He thought he could get well when
he come home. He talk all the way down about the bayou, and
about you and Louisette. Just three hours ago he had a bad
hemorrhage, and he died from weakness. Just three hours ago. He
said he wanted to get home and give Louisette her diamond ring,
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
