| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: He remembered that they were going home on the next day. Within a
fortnight he would be in San Francisco again--a taxpayer, a
police-protected citizen once more. It had been good fun, after
all, this three weeks' life on the "Bertha Millner," a strange
episode cut out from the normal circle of his conventional life.
He ran over the incidents of the cruise--Kitchell, the turtle
hunt, the finding of the derelict, the dead captain, the squall,
and the awful sight of the sinking bark, Moran at the wheel, the
grewsome business of the shark-fishing, and last of all that
inexplicable lifting and quivering of the schooner. He told
himself that now he would probably never know the explanation of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: Without hesitation the two men made their way through a tangle of
dingy, uninteresting alleys, between modem tenements, until about
ten minutes later they stood before an old three-storied building,
which had a frontage of four windows on the street. "This is our
place," said the detective, looking up at the tall, handsome
gateway and the rococo carvings that ornamented the front of this
decaying dwelling. It was very evidently of a different age and
class from those about it.
Muller had already raised his hand to pull the bell, when he stopped
and let it sink again. His eye caught sight of a placard pasted up
on the wall of the next house, and already half torn off by the wind.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: stands on the threshold of all that is to come; therefore I were lacking in
deference did I pass her and her Scions by without due mention,--employing
no English but such as fits a theme so stately. Although she never left
the threshold, nor went to Kings Port with me, nor saw the boy, or the
girl, or any part of what befell them, she knew quite well who the boy
was. When I wrote her about him, she remembered one of his grandmothers
whom she had visited during her own girlhood, long before the war, both
in Kings Port and at the family plantation; and this old memory led her
to express a kindly interest in him. How odd and far away that interest
seems, now that it has been turned to cold displeasure!
Some other day, perhaps, I may try to tell you much more than I can tell
you here about Aunt Carola and her Colonial Society--that apple which
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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 A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the
world to find
Some little touch of beauty that my soul had
left behind.
THE FINEST AGE
When he was only nine months old,
And plump and round and pink of cheek,
A joy to tickle and to hold,
Before he'd even learned to speak,
His gentle mother used to say:
"It is too bad that he must grow.
A Heap O' Livin' |
