| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: she moved away and placed the door key on the stand, out of reach.
However, toward morning she dozed. There was steady firing at Nieuport
and the windows shook constantly. An ambulance came in, followed by a
stirring on the lower floor. Then silence. He got up then and secured
the key. There was no time for dressing, because she was a Suspicious
person and likely to waken at any time. He rolled his clothing into a
bundle and carried it under his well arm. The other was almost useless.
The ambulance was still waiting outside, at the foot of the staircase.
There were voices and lights in the operating room, forward along the
tiled hall. Still in his night clothing, Henri got into the ambulance
and threw his uniform behind him. Then he got the car under way.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: to be kept more strictly in supervision. This command was quite
superfluous, for neither the rector nor the monkish professors spared
rod or whip; and the lictors sometimes, by their orders, lashed their
consuls so severely that the latter rubbed their trousers for weeks
afterwards. This was to many of them a trifle, only a little more
stinging than good vodka with pepper: others at length grew tired of
such constant blisters, and ran away to Zaporozhe if they could find
the road and were not caught on the way. Ostap Bulba, although he
began to study logic, and even theology, with much zeal, did not
escape the merciless rod. Naturally, all this tended to harden his
character, and give him that firmness which distinguishes the
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: stupid like the ox; and he will follow you about, smoking; the cigar, like a
little dog, your little dog, trotting at your back. He will not know he is
doing it, but he will be doing it just the same. Don't I know, Chris? Oh, I
have watched you, watched you, so often, and loved you for it, and loved you
again for it, because you were so delightfully and blindly unaware of what you
were doing."
"I'm almost bursting with vanity from listening to you," he laughed, passing
his arm around her and drawing her against him.
"Yes," she whispered, "and in this very moment, when you are laughing at all
that I have said, you, the feel of you, your soul,--call it what you will, it
is you,--is calling for all the love that is in me."
|
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 King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: seemed to command its whole circumference. It was impossible to
drink out of the mug without being subjected to an intense gaze out
of the side of these eyes, and Schwartz positively averred that
once, after emptying it, full of Rhenish, seventeen times, he had
seen them wink! When it came to the mug's turn to be made into
spoons, it half broke poor little Gluck's heart; but the brothers
only laughed at him, tossed the mug into the melting pot, and
staggered out to the alehouse, leaving him, as usual, to pour the
gold into bars when it was all ready.
When they were gone, Gluck took a farewell look at his old
friend in the melting pot. The flowing hair was all gone; nothing
|
