| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: follow you swiftly as you turned off Elm Street, homeward bound.
If she went downtown now, she saw only those Saturday-night
family groups which are familiar to every small town. The
husband, very damp as to hair and clean as to shirt, guarding the
gocart outside while the woman accomplished her Saturday-night
trading at Ding's or Halpin's. Sometimes there were as many as
half a dozen gocarts outside Halpin's, each containing a sleeping
burden, relaxed, chubby, fat-cheeked. The waiting men smoked
their pipes and conversed largely. "Hello, Ed. The woman's
inside, buyin' the store out, I guess."
"That so? Mine, to. Well, how's everything?"
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: struggle for freedom without obtaining it.
We are so unwilling to believe anything to our
own disadvantage, that we will always imagine the
perspicacity of our judgment and the strength of
our resolution more likely to increase than to grow
less by time; and, therefore, conclude, that the will
to pursue laudable purposes, will be always seconded
by the power.
But, however we may be deceived in calculating
the strength of our faculties, we cannot doubt the
uncertainty of that life in which they must be
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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 The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: they was simple. The investors in stock paid in their money, and--
well, I guess that's all they had to do. The company received it, and
--I don't call to mind anything else. Me and Buck knew more about
selling corn salve than we did about Wall Street, but even we could
see how the Golconda Gold Bond Investment Company was making money.
You take in money and pay back ten per cent. of it; it's plain enough
that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per cent., less
expenses, as long as the fish bite.
Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks an
eye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains. Do you call it
good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?
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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 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: to send round the bills of his customers and ask for payment. Before
doing so, the head clerk made him repeat the unheard-of order. The
clients,--a fine term applied by retail shopkeepers to their
customers, and used by Cesar in spite of his wife, who however ended
by saying, "Call them what you like, provided they pay!"--his clients,
then, were rich people, through whom he had never lost money, who paid
when they pleased, and among whom Cesar often had a floating amount of
fifty or sixty thousand francs due to him. The second clerk went
through the books and copied off the largest sums. Cesar dreaded his
wife: that she might not see his depression under this simoom of
misfortune, he prepared to go out.
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
