| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: himself and liberty.
'I am going to ask you something,' she said; it might come naturally
enough from another man with whom your friendship was as candid as
it is with me; but there is an awkwardness in it from a woman. You
must believe I have a good reason. Will you tell me about your
first meeting with Mrs. Innes, when--when you became engaged?'
She knew she was daring a good deal; but when a man's prison is to
be brought down about his ears, one might as well begin, she
thought, at the foundation.
For a moment Innes did not speak, and then his words came slowly.
I find it difficult,' he said, 'to answer you. How can it matter--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: Dingaan; so spare them, my brother, if you may."
Then Umslopogaas lifted up his voice, commanding that the killing
should cease, and sent messengers running swiftly with these words:
"This is the command of Bulalio: that he should lifts hand against one
more of the people of the Halakazi shall be killed himself"; and the
soldiers obeyed him, though the order came somewhat late, and no more
of the Halakazi were brought to doom. They were suffered to escape,
except those of the women and children who were kept to be led away as
captives. And they ran far that night. Nor did they come together
again to be a people, for they feared Galazi the Wolf, who would be
chief over them, but they were scattered wide in the world, to sojourn
Nada the Lily |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: not let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon
his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited
all the sick-chambers for miles about among the mountain towns,
and sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or
quite as often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was
dug many a year too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe in
his mouth, and, as somebody said, in allusion to his habit of
swearing, it was always alight with hell-fire.
These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand
each after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of
the contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they
The Snow Image |
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 Antonia by Willa Cather: When he was tired, his lectures were clouded, obscure, elliptical;
but when he was interested they were wonderful. I believe that Gaston
Cleric narrowly missed being a great poet, and I have sometimes thought
that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift.
He squandered too much in the heat of personal communication.
How often I have seen him draw his dark brows together, fix his eyes
upon some object on the wall or a figure in the carpet, and then
flash into the lamplight the very image that was in his brain.
He could bring the drama of antique life before one out
of the shadows--white figures against blue backgrounds.
I shall never forget his face as it looked one night when he told me
My Antonia |
