| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: "Like it! I'm afraid I haven't seen it. From here it looks
like Coney. But it buys like Seattle. Like it! Well, I should
say I do!"
"Ah, senora," exclaimed Pages, distressed, "wait! In six days
you will behold Buenos Aires. Your New York, Londres,
Paris--bah! You shall drive with my wife and daughter through
Palermo. You shall see jewels, motors, toilettes as never
before. And you will visit my establishment?" He raised an
emphatic forefinger. "But surely!"
Emma McChesney regarded him solemnly.
"I promise to do that. You may rely on me."
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: all make everything of mother; she'll have a lovely time to-day.
I wouldn't have had her miss it, and there won't be a thing she'll
ever regret, except to mourn because William wa'n't here."
Mrs. Blackett having been properly escorted to the house, Mrs.
Todd received her own full share of honor, and some of the men,
with a simple kindness that was the soul of chivalry, waited upon
us and our baskets and led away the white horse. I already knew
some of Mrs. Todd's friends and kindred, and felt like an adopted
Bowden in this happy moment. It seemed to be enough for anyone to
have arrived by the same conveyance as Mrs. Blackett, who presently
had her court inside the house, while Mrs. Todd, large, hospitable,
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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 Alcibiades I by Plato: the anointings with myrrh, the multitudes of attendants, and all the other
bravery of the Persians, you will be ashamed when you discern your own
inferiority; or if you look at the temperance and orderliness and ease and
grace and magnanimity and courage and endurance and love of toil and desire
of glory and ambition of the Lacedaemonians--in all these respects you will
see that you are but a child in comparison of them. Even in the matter of
wealth, if you value yourself upon that, I must reveal to you how you
stand; for if you form an estimate of the wealth of the Lacedaemonians, you
will see that our possessions fall far short of theirs. For no one here
can compete with them either in the extent and fertility of their own and
the Messenian territory, or in the number of their slaves, and especially
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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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at Annie, to discover
whether she sympathized in her husband's estimate of the
comparative value of the beautiful and the practical. There was,
amid all her kindness towards himself, amid all the wonder and
admiration with which she contemplated the marvellous work of his
hands and incarnation of his idea, a secret scorn--too secret,
perhaps, for her own consciousness, and perceptible only to such
intuitive discernment as that of the artist. But Owen, in the
latter stages of his pursuit, had risen out of the region in
which such a discovery might have been torture. He knew that the
world, and Annie as the representative of the world, whatever
Mosses From An Old Manse |
