| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: prisoners at present detained in the prison, a man and two women
(one of these women, as the chief criminal, to be conducted
separately), had to appear at Court. So now, on the 28th of
April, at 8 o'clock, a jailer and soon after him a woman warder
with curly grey hair, dressed in a jacket with sleeves trimmed
with gold, with a blue-edged belt round her waist, and having a
look of suffering on her face, came into the corridor.
"You want Maslova?" she asked, coming up to the cell with the
jailer who was on duty.
The jailer, rattling the iron padlock, opened the door of the
cell, from which there came a whiff of air fouler even than that
Resurrection |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: SOCRATES: Then the same person is able to speak both falsely and truly
about calculation? And that person is he who is good at calculation--the
arithmetician?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Who, then, Hippias, is discovered to be false at calculation?
Is he not the good man? For the good man is the able man, and he is the
true man.
HIPPIAS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Do you not see, then, that the same man is false and also true
about the same matters? And the true man is not a whit better than the
false; for indeed he is the same with him and not the very opposite, as you
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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 Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: whose rebuttal is ready. Now she perched for a moment at the
extreme edge of the arm of a chair. Her skirt subsided
decorously. Buck noticed that, with surprise, even in the midst
of his heated protest.
"T. A., you've probably forgotten, but those are the very
arguments used when the hobble was introduced. Preposterous,
people said--impossible! Women couldn't walk in 'em. Wouldn't,
couldn't sit down in 'em. Women couldn't run, play tennis, skate
in them. The car steps were too high for them. Well, what
happened? Women had to walk in them, and a new gait became the
fashion. Women took lessons in how to sit down in them. They
Emma McChesney & Co. |
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 Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: his own kind, the water shall never trouble; and if the balm be
sophisticate, that is to say counterfeited, the water shall become
anon trouble; and also if the balm be fine it shall fall to the
bottom of the vessel, as though it were quicksilver, for the fine
balm is more heavy twice than is the balm that is sophisticate and
counterfeited. Now I have spoken of balm.
And now also I shall speak of another thing that is beyond Babylon,
above the flood of the Nile, toward the desert between Africa and
Egypt; that is to say, of the garners of Joseph, that he let make
for to keep the grains for the peril of the dear years. And they
be made of stone, full well made of masons' craft; of the which two
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