| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: But kept cold distance, and did thence remove
To spend her living in eternal love.
'But O, my sweet, what labour is't to leave
The thing we have not, mastering what not strives?
Paling the place which did no form receive,
Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves:
She that her fame so to herself contrives,
The scars of battle 'scapeth by the flight,
And makes her absence valiant, not her might.
'O pardon me, in that my boast is true:
The accident which brought me to her eye,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: and maddened, exhaled the odor of blood. Her panting mouth was open,
and her nostrils were not sufficient for her breath. There are certain
animals who fall upon their enemy in their rage, do it to death, and
seem in the tranquillity of victory to have forgotten it. There are
others who prowl around their victim, who guard it in fear lest it
should be taken away from them, and who, like the Achilles of Homer,
drag their enemy by the feet nine times round the walls of Troy. The
Marquise was like that. She did not see Henri. In the first place, she
was too secure of her solitude to be afraid of witnesses; and,
secondly, she was too intoxicated with warm blood, too excited with
the fray, too exalted, to take notice of the whole of Paris, if Paris
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: folds of her skirt.
Never before had two such coarse, cruel fiends as Deering and Girty encumbered
the earth. Even on the border, where the best men were bad, they were the
worst. Deering was yet drunk, but Girty had recovered somewhat from the
effects of the rum he had absorbed. The former rolled his big eyes and nodded
his shaggy head. He was passing judgment, from his point of view, on the fine
points of the girl.
"She cer'aintly is," he declared with a grin. "She's a little beauty. Beats
any I ever seen!"
Jim Girty stroked his sharp chin with dirty fingers. His yellow eyes, his
burnt saffron skin, his hooked nose, his thin lips--all his evil face seemed
The Spirit of the Border |
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 One Basket by Edna Ferber: Dike's.
He must have just arrived. The flurry of explanation was still
in progress. Dike's knapsack was still on his back, and his
canteen at his hip, his helmet slung over his shoulder. A brown,
hard, glowing Dike, strangely tall and handsome and older, too.
Older.
All this Ben saw in less than one electric second. Then he had
the boy's two shoulders in his hands, and Dike was saying,
"Hello, Pop."
Of the roomful, Dike and old Ben were the only quiet ones. The
others were taking up the explanation and going over it again and
One Basket |
