| 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: place."
They beached their boat, and built a little fire, and had supper
on the riverbank, and Tessie picked out the choice bits for
him--the breast of the chicken, beautifully golden brown; the
ripest tomato; the firmest, juiciest pickle; the corner of the
little cake which would give him a double share of icing.
From Chuck, between mouthfuls: "I guess you don't know how good
this tastes. Camp grub's all right, but after you've had a few
months of it you get so you don't believe there IS such a thing
as real fried chicken and homemade chocolate cake."
"I'm glad you like it, Chuck. Here, take this drumstick. You
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: come back."
The two young men went back to the room where the old man was
lying. Eugene was startled at the change in Goriot's face, so
livid, distorted, and feeble.
"How are you, papa?" he said, bending over the pallet-bed. Goriot
turned his dull eyes upon Eugene, looked at him attentively, and
did not recognize him. It was more than the student could bear;
the tears came into his eyes.
"Bianchon, ought we to have the curtains put up in the windows?"
"No, the temperature and the light do not affect him now. It
would be a good thing for him if he felt heat or cold; but we
Father Goriot |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: present day in our own societies. Our material environment differs in
every respect from that of our grandparents, and bears little or no
resemblance to that of a few centuries ago. Here and there, even in our
civilised societies in remote agricultural districts, the old social
conditions may remain partly undisturbed; but throughout the bulk of our
societies the substitution of mechanical for hand-labour, the wide
diffusion of knowledge through the always increasing cheap printing-press;
the rapidly increasing gathering of human creatures into vast cities, where
not merely thousands but millions of individuals are collected together
under physical and mental conditions of life which invert every social
condition of the past; the increasingly rapid means of locomotion; the
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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 In the Cage by Henry James: either. If our young lady had never taken such jumps before it was
simply that she had never before been so affected. She went all
the way. Mary and Cissy had been round together, in their single
superb person, to see him--he must live round the corner; they had
found that, in consequence of something they had come, precisely,
to make up for or to have another scene about, he had gone off--
gone off just on purpose to make them feel it; on which they had
come together to Cocker's as to the nearest place; where they had
put in the three forms partly in order not to put in the one alone.
The two others in a manner, covered it, muffled it, passed it off.
Oh yes, she went all the way, and this was a specimen of how she
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