| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-defying swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: the career of Inez in the past two years, but nothing earlier.
She was the ``mystery girl'' in the Tennessee town, as she was in
Chicago. The B.'s kept a boarding-house and took Inez as a
waitress, knowing her first by still another alias. She worked
for them about a year and then went to Memphis, where she was
sick in a hospital. She had now taken the B.'s name. They were
regarded as her guardians (on the girl's authority) and they
finally sent for her again out of pity, although they felt she
had a questionable past, and they knew she had lied tremendously
while with them. Then the B.'s moved away and turned Inez over
to a respectable family. While with the B.'s Inez had been
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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 Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: air of comfort with its venerable antiquity, and recollect that
it is your lordship's property, I shall feel in better quarters
here than if I were in the best hotel London could afford."
"I trust--I have no doubt--that you will find yourself as
comfortable as I wish you, my dear General," said the young
nobleman; and once more bidding his guest good-night, he shook
him by the hand, and withdrew.
The General once more looked round him, and internally
congratulating himself on his return to peaceful life, the
comforts of which were endeared by the recollection of the
hardships and dangers he had lately sustained, undressed himself,
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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 Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: yet; before the standard crop came in there accumulated, in
abundant times like this, a large superfluity of early apples, and
windfalls from the trees of later harvest, which would not keep
long. Thus, in the baskets, and quivering in the hopper of the
mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, including the mellow
countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, stubbards,
ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous youth.
Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh
escaped her. Perhaps she thought of the day--not so far distant--
when that friend of her childhood had met her by her father's
arrangement in this same town, warm with hope, though diffident,
The Woodlanders |
