| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: For down I blundered, like a fugitive,
To find the old room in Eleventh Street.
God save us! -- I came here again to live."
We rose at that, and all the ghosts rose then,
And followed us unseen to his old room.
No longer a good place for living men
We found it, and we shivered in the gloom.
The goods he took away from there were few,
And soon we found ourselves outside once more,
Where now the lamps along the Avenue
Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor.
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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 Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: view of sea and shore. The summer vacation now prevailed, and
after finding the door unfastened, and taking a long look through
one of the seaward windows, and reflecting afterward for some time
in a shady place near by among the bayberry bushes, I returned to
the chief place of business in the village, and, to the amusement
of two of the selectmen, brothers and autocrats of Dunnet Landing,
I hired the schoolhouse for the rest of the vacation for fifty
cents a week.
Selfish as it may appear, the retired situation seemed to
possess great advantages, and I spent many days there quite
undisturbed, with the sea-breeze blowing through the small, high
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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 Confidence by Henry James: me very much. It ought to touch you, Mr. Wright. When she heard
I was engaged to Mr. Longueville, it gave her an immense relief.
And yet, at the same moment you were protesting, and denouncing,
and saying those horrible things about her! I know how she appears--
she likes admiration. But the admiration in the world which she
would most delight in just now would be yours. She plays
with Captain Lovelock as a child does with a wooden harlequin,
she pulls a string and he throws up his arms and legs.
She has about as much intention of eloping with him as a little
girl might have of eloping with a pasteboard Jim Crow.
If you were to have a frank explanation with her,
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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 Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: It's held up by a steel strike. A bother,
of course, but the sort of thing one is always
having to put up with. But the Moorlock
Bridge is a continual anxiety. You see,
the truth is, we are having to build pretty well to
the strain limit up there. They've crowded
me too much on the cost. It's all very well
if everything goes well, but these estimates have
never been used for anything of such length
before. However, there's nothing to be done.
They hold me to the scale I've used in shorter
Alexander's Bridge |
