| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: the high country beyond the Mission."
"Ah, the Quien Sabe rancho. The sheep are grazing there this
week."
Solotari, the keeper of the restaurant, explained:
"Young Annixter sold his wheat stubble on the ground to the sheep
raisers off yonder;" he motioned eastward toward the Sierra
foothills. "Since Sunday the herd has been down. Very clever,
that young Annixter. He gets a price for his stubble, which else
he would have to burn, and also manures his land as the sheep
move from place to place. A true Yankee, that Annixter, a good
gringo."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: drawing the drugget from under Vasili Andreevich.
Having got the drugget he folded it in two, and after taking
off the breechband and pad, covered Mukhorty with it.
'Anyhow it will be warmer, silly!' he said, putting back the
breechband and the pad on the horse over the drugget. Then
having finished that business he returned to the sledge, and
addressing Vasili Andreevich, said: 'You won't need the
sackcloth, will you? And let me have some straw.'
And having taken these things from under Vasili Andreevich,
Nikita went behind the sledge, dug out a hole for himself in
the snow, put straw into it, wrapped his coat well round him,
Master and Man |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: haughtily as they bore themselves in the noonday streets of their
native town, were no better than bond-servants to these plebeian
Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy commonwealth of sleep.
Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavor to reduce these
alleged necromancies within a system, instead of rejecting
them as altogether fabulous.
A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven-gabled
mansion in its more recent aspect, will bring this preliminary
chapter to a close. The street in which it upreared its venerable
peaks has long ceased to be a fashionable quarter of the town;
so that, though the old edifice was surrounded by habitations of
House of Seven Gables |
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 Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,
Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest hours, observed as they flew,
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew;
And, privileg'd by age, desires to know
In brief, the grounds and motives of her woe.
So slides he down upon his grained bat,
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:
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