| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: rolling up my blankets.
"You will not change your mind?" said the Virginian by the fire.
"It is thirty-five miles."
I shook my head, feeling a certain shame that he should see how
unnerved I was.
He swallowed a hot cupful, and after it sat thinking; and
presently he passed his hand across his brow, shutting his eyes.
Again he poured out a cup, and emptying this, rose abruptly to
his feet as if shaking himself free from something
"Let's pack and quit here," he said.
Our horses were in the corral and our belongings in the shelter
The Virginian |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: four more plays or so in a year; you will make up your mind that
succeed they must, when you think of the end in view, and that your
wife will not walk in the mud. It is a shame that I should have to ask
for it. You ought to have guessed my continual discomfort during the
five years since I married you.'
" 'I am quite willing,' returned du Bruel. 'But we shall ruin
ourselves.'
" 'If you run into debt,' she said, 'my uncle's money will clear it
off some day.'
" 'You are quite capable of leaving me the debts and taking the
property.'
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: love was a great love, above jealousy. It not only held
her happiness above his own, but the happiness and
welfare of the man she loved, as well.
It was dusk when they reached Battel and as Norman
of Torn bid the prince adieu, for the horde was to make
camp just without the city, he said:
"May I ask My Lord to carry a message to Lady
Bertrade? It is in reference to a promise I made her
two years since and which I now, for the first time, be
able to fulfill."
"Certainly, my friend," replied Philip. The outlaw,
The Outlaw of Torn |
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 Charmides by Plato: other cases hardly credible--inadmissible, for example, in the case of
magnitudes, numbers, and the like?
Very true.
But in the case of hearing and sight, or in the power of self-motion, and
the power of heat to burn, this relation to self will be regarded as
incredible by some, but perhaps not by others. And some great man, my
friend, is wanted, who will satisfactorily determine for us, whether there
is nothing which has an inherent property of relation to self, or some
things only and not others; and whether in this class of self-related
things, if there be such a class, that science which is called wisdom or
temperance is included. I altogether distrust my own power of determining
|
