| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: some system of subscription to projected treatises with their non-
appearance provided for--provided for, I mean, by the indulgence of
subscribers. The author's real misfortune was that subscribers
were so wretchedly literal. When they tastelessly enquired why
publication hadn't ensued I was tempted to ask who in the world had
ever been so published. Nature herself had brought him out in
voluminous form, and the money was simply a deposit on borrowing
the work.
CHAPTER V
I was doubtless often a nuisance to my friends in those years; but
there were sacrifices I declined to make, and I never passed the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: he had handed the paper she had given him to the British chief
of staff, even though the information it contained permitted
the British to frustrate a German flank attack, he was still much
dissatisfied with himself. And possibly the root of this
dissatis-
faction lay in the fact that he realized that were he again to
have the same opportunity he would still find it as impossible
to slay a woman as it had been in Wilhelmstal that night.
Tarzan blamed this weakness, as he considered it, upon his
association with the effeminating influences of civilization, for
in the bottom of his savage heart he held in contempt both
Tarzan the Untamed |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: not thinking about them, and they need not think about her; and
that if the Piache (in plain English, the conjuror), as she
supposed, wanted a present, he might have all her Mexican feather-
dresses; she would not wear them--they were wild Indian things, and
she was an English maid--but they would just do for a Piache; and
so darted upstairs, brought them down, and insisted so stoutly on
arraying the vicar therein, that the good man beat a swift retreat.
But he carried off with him, nevertheless, one of the handsomest
mantles, which, instead of selling it, he converted cleverly enough
into an altar-cloth; and for several years afterwards, the
communion at Northam was celebrated upon a blaze of emerald, azure,
|
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 Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: He will think I am demented, no doubt. Perhaps you think so."
Mademoiselle shook her head slowly. "Your reason is not yet
clear to me," she said.
Neither was it quite clear to Edna herself; but it unfolded
itself as she sat for a while in silence. Instinct had prompted
her to put away her husband's bounty in casting off her allegiance.
She did not know how it would be when he returned. There would
have to be an understanding, an explanation. Conditions would
some way adjust themselves, she felt; but whatever came,
she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.
"I shall give a grand dinner before I leave the old house!"
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
