| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: He was mixed with the horses. . . ."
Every one who talked spoke of the outbreak of revolution as a matter
of days or at the utmost weeks. And whatever question Benham chose
to ask these talkers were prepared to answer. Except one. "And
after the revolution," he asked, "what then? . . ." Then they waved
their hands, and failed to convey meanings by reassuring gestures.
He was absorbed in his effort to understand this universal ominous
drift towards a conflict. He was trying to piece together a
process, if it was one and the same process, which involved riots in
Lodz, fighting at Libau, wild disorder at Odessa, remote colossal
battlings in Manchuria, the obscure movements of a disastrous fleet
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: shows a disordered state of the organism. The waxy tones were in all
the visible parts of her flesh. The neck and shoulders explained by
their blanched paleness the wasted arms, flung forward and crossed
upon the table. Her feet seemed enervated, shrunken from illness. Her
night-gown came only to her knees and showed the flaccid muscles, the
blue veins, the impoverished flesh of the legs. The cold, to which she
paid no heed, turned her lips violet, and a sad smile, drawing up the
corners of a sensitive mouth, showed teeth that were white as ivory
and quite small,--pretty, transparent teeth, in keeping with the
delicate ears, the rather sharp but dainty nose, and the general
outline of her face, which, in spite of its roundness, was lovely. All
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: The woman on the floor cursed. Jimmie was intent upon his
bruised fore-arms. The girl cast a glance about the room filled with
a chaotic mass of debris, and at the red, writhing body of her mother.
"Go teh hell an' good riddance."
She went.
Chapter X
Jimmie had an idea it wasn't common courtesy for a friend to
come to one's home and ruin one's sister. But he was not sure how
much Pete knew about the rules of politeness.
The following night he returned home from work at rather a
late hour in the evening. In passing through the halls he came
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: he fails to do so. The oath of an{sic} two villains is
sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most
pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of
slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no
witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound
by the law to hear but _one side_, and that side is the side of
the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let
it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king
hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats
of justice are filled with judges, who hold their office under an
open and palpable _bribe_, and are bound, in deciding in the case
My Bondage and My Freedom |
