| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: and she breathes again only when, head dripping, she makes for the
back yard, the sitting-room radiator, or the side porch (depending
on her place of residence, and the time of year).
Mary Louise was seized with the feeling at ten o'clock on a
joyous June morning. She tried to fight it off because she had got
to that stage in the construction of her story where her hero was
beginning to talk and act a little more like a real live man, and
a little less like a clothing store dummy. (By the way, they don't
seem to be using those pink-and-white, black-mustachioed figures
any more. Another good simile gone.)
Mary Louise had been battling with that hero for a week. He
Buttered Side Down |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: Yancey Goree's feverish desire to convert property into
cash, and they bought the old Goree homestead, paying
four thousand dollars ready money into the spendthrift's
shaking hands.
Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of
the Gorees sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end
of his row, spurned by the cronies whom he had gorged,
strangers dwelt in the halls of his fathers.
A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched
street, with something travelling in the midst of it. A
little breeze wafted the cloud to one side, and a new,
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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 Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: return home, unless it is your wish that my lord, your father,
should take his departure for the other world, for nothing else can be
the consequence of the grief he is in at your absence."
"But how did my father know that I had gone this road and in this
dress?" said Don Luis.
"It was a student to whom you confided your intentions," answered
the servant, "that disclosed them, touched with pity at the distress
he saw your father suffer on missing you; he therefore despatched four
of his servants in quest of you, and here we all are at your
service, better pleased than you can imagine that we shall return so
soon and be able to restore you to those eyes that so yearn for you."
Don Quixote |
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 Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: A something--was it nobler than myself?
Seemed my reproach? He is not of my kind.
He could not love me, did he know me well.
Nay, let him go--and quickly.' And her knights
Laughed not, but thrust him bounden out of door.
Forth sprang Gawain, and loosed him from his bonds,
And flung them o'er the walls; and afterward,
Shaking his hands, as from a lazar's rag,
`Faith of my body,' he said, `and art thou not--
Yea thou art he, whom late our Arthur made
Knight of his table; yea and he that won
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