| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: to take the women to church, but went down
to the barn immediately after breakfast and
stayed there all day. When Carl Linstrum came
over in the afternoon, Alexandra winked to
him and pointed toward the barn. He under-
stood her and went down to play cards with the
boys. They believed that a very wicked thing
to do on Sunday, and it relieved their feelings.
Alexandra stayed in the house. On Sunday
afternoon Mrs. Bergson always took a nap, and
O Pioneers! |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: cab. No; he was too proud to come again; he rejected the desire and
walked on and on, on and on--If only she could read the names of those
visionary streets down which he passed! But her imagination betrayed
her at this point, or mocked her with a sense of their strangeness,
darkness, and distance. Indeed, instead of helping herself to any
decision, she only filled her mind with the vast extent of London and
the impossibility of finding any single figure that wandered off this
way and that way, turned to the right and to the left, chose that
dingy little back street where the children were playing in the road,
and so--She roused herself impatiently. She walked rapidly along
Holborn. Soon she turned and walked as rapidly in the other direction.
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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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: poplars, and making a green valley in the world. After a good
woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable
on earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt on my life; which
was after all one part owing to the unruly winds of heaven that had
blown down the tree, one part to my own mismanagement, and only a
third part to the river itself, and that not out of malice, but
from its great preoccupation over its business of getting to the
sea. A difficult business, too; for the detours it had to make are
not to be counted. The geographers seem to have given up the
attempt; for I found no map represent the infinite contortion of
its course. A fact will say more than any of them. After we had
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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 A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: And, as he turned away weeping, one whose armour was inlaid with
gilt flowers, and on whose helmet couched a lion that had wings,
came up and made inquiry of the soldiers who it was who had sought
entrance. And they said to him, 'It is a beggar and the child of a
beggar, and we have driven him away.'
'Nay,' he cried, laughing, 'but we will sell the foul thing for a
slave, and his price shall be the price of a bowl of sweet wine.'
And an old and evil-visaged man who was passing by called out, and
said, 'I will buy him for that price,' and, when he had paid the
price, he took the Star-Child by the hand and led him into the
city.
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