| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: while I tell you the prophecy that Teiresias made me, and how
carefully Aeaean Circe warned me to shun the island of the
blessed sun-god, for it was here, she said, that our worst
danger would lie. Head the ship, therefore, away from the
island.'
"The men were in despair at this, and Eurylochus at once gave me
an insolent answer. 'Ulysses,' said he, 'you are cruel; you are
very strong yourself and never get worn out; you seem to be made
of iron, and now, though your men are exhausted with toil and
want of sleep, you will not let them land and cook themselves a
good supper upon this island, but bid them put out to sea and go
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: "Is this the divine fire that is supposed to ignite
genius and make it practicable and wage-earning?"
The story was sentimental drivel, full of whim-
pering softheartedness and gushing egoism. All
the art that Pettit had acquired was gone. A pe-
rusal of its buttery phrases would have made a cynic
of a sighing chambermaid.
In the morning Pettit came to my room. I read
him his doom mercilessly. He laughed idiotically.
"All right, Old Hoss," he said, cheerily, "make
cigar-lighters of it. What's the difference? I'm
The Voice of the City |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: MARIA.
WHEN Maria had come a little to herself, I ask'd her if she
remembered a pale thin person of a man, who had sat down betwixt
her and her goat about two years before? She said she was
unsettled much at that time, but remembered it upon two accounts: -
that ill as she was, she saw the person pitied her; and next, that
her goat had stolen his handkerchief, and she had beat him for the
theft; - she had wash'd it, she said, in the brook, and kept it
ever since in her pocket to restore it to him in case she should
ever see him again, which, she added, he had half promised her. As
she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to
|
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 Dracula by Bram Stoker: And yet I can laugh at her very grave, laugh when the clay from
the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say `Thud, thud!'
to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek.
My heart bleed for that poor boy, that dear boy, so of
the age of mine own boy had I been so blessed that he live,
and with his hair and eyes the same.
"There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when
he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick,
and make my father-heart yearn to him as to no other man,
not even you, friend John, for we are more level in experiences
than father and son, yet even at such a moment King Laugh
Dracula |
