| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: and choose to pay for them out of the rates." Then, I think, the
august shade might well make answer: "We used to call you, in old
Rome, northern barbarians. It seems that you have not lost all
your barbarian habits. Are you aware that, in every city in the
Roman empire, there were, as a matter of course, public baths
open, not only to the poorest freeman, but to the slave, usually
for the payment of the smallest current coin, and often
gratuitously? Are you aware that in Rome itself, millionaire
after millionaire, emperor after emperor, from Menenius Agrippa
and Nero down to Diocletian and Constantine, built baths, and yet
more baths; and connected with them gymnasia for exercise,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: revealing in these confidences of hers. But Aunt Sophy, the
shrewd, somehow sensed it.
"You're alone too much, evenings. That's what comes of living
in a boardinghouse. You come over to me for a week. The change
will do you good, and it'll be nice for me, too, having somebody
to keep me company."
Julia often came for a week or ten days at a time. Julia, about
the house after supper, was given to those vivid splashy
negligees with big flower patterns strewn over them. They made
her hair look blacker and her skin whiter by contrast. Sometimes
Eugene or Adele or both would drop in and the four would play
One Basket |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: They seemed never to go out, or not beyond the verandah, but
sat close in the little parlour, quietly talking or listening
to the wind among the trees. Sleep dwelt in the Toll House,
like a fixture: summer sleep, shallow, soft, and dreamless.
A cuckoo-clock, a great rarity in such a place, hooted at
intervals about the echoing house; and Mr. Jenning would open
his eyes for a moment in the bar, and turn the leaf of a
newspaper, and the resting school-ma'ams in the parlour would
be recalled to the consciousness of their inaction. Busy
Mrs. Corwin and her busy Chinaman might be heard indeed, in
the penetralia, pounding dough or rattling dishes; or perhaps
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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 The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: eyes, wide with their alarm, were fixed on the window. There was
a man's face there, just above the sill - and now a man's form
swung through the window, and dropped lightly to the floor inside
the room. And she stared in horrified fascination, and could not
move. It was the Adventurer.
"It's Miss Gray, isn't it? The White Moll?" he murmured amiably.
"I've been trying to find you all night. What corking luck! You
remember me, don't you? Last night, you know."
She did not answer. His eyes had shifted from her face to the
glittering river of gems in her hand.
"I see," he smiled, "that you are ahead of me again. Well, it is
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