| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: furnish matter for ballads. I will some day write all this,
sire, for the instruction of my brother kings.
"I will first tell how, on arriving at the residence of Mr.
Norton, I met with a court chaplain, who was looking on at a
party playing at skittles, and an old servant who named me,
bursting into tears, and who was as near and as certainly
killing me by his fidelity as another might have been by
treachery. Then I will tell of my terrors -- yes, sire, of
my terrors -- when, at the house of Colonel Windham, a
farrier who came to shoe our horses declared they had been
shod in the north."
Ten Years Later |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: Now this familiarity was precisely what it was necessary to avoid.
Our arms, which were noiseless, could only produce a moderate effect
on the savages, who have little respect for aught but blustering things.
The thunderbolt without the reverberations of thunder would frighten man
but little, though the danger lies in the lightning, not in the noise.
At this moment the canoes approached the Nautilus, and a shower
of arrows alighted on her.
I went down to the saloon, but found no one there. I ventured
to knock at the door that opened into the Captain's room.
"Come in," was the answer.
I entered, and found Captain Nemo deep in algebraical calculations
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: her as the White Moll, and had come, since she had volunteered no
further information, tacitly to accept her as such, and nothing more.
Again she shook her head. It wasn't altogether a normal life. She
was only a woman, with all the aspirations of a woman, with all the
yearning of youth for its measure of gayety and pleasure. True, she
had not made a recluse of herself outside her work; but, equally,
on the other hand, she had not made any intimate friends in her own
station in life. She had never purposed continuing indefinitely the
work she was doing, nor did she now; but, little by little, it had
forced its claims upon her until those claims were not easy to
ignore. Even though the circumstances in which her father had left
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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 a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: and put her arm across her face like a child who expected to be hurt as
Herr Brechenmacher lurched in.
6. THE MODERN SOUL.
"Good-evening," said the Herr Professor, squeezing my hand; "wonderful
weather! I have just returned from a party in the wood. I have been
making music for them on my trombone. You know, these pine-trees provide
most suitable accompaniment for a trombone! They are sighing delicacy
against sustained strength, as I remarked once in a lecture on wind
instruments in Frankfort. May I be permitted to sit beside you on this
bench, gnadige Frau?"
He sat down, tugging at a white-paper package in the tail pocket of his
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