| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: After dinner he at once went into his bedroom and for a long time
walked up and down in great excitement, listening to every sound
in the house and expecting to hear her steps. The animal man
inside him had now not only lifted its head, but had succeeded in
trampling under foot the spiritual man of the days of his first
visit, and even of that every morning. That dreadful animal man
alone now ruled over him.
Though he was watching for her all day he could not manage to
meet her alone. She was probably trying to evade him. In the
evening, however, she was obliged to go into the room next to
his. The doctor had been asked to stay the night, and she had to
Resurrection |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: divorce, whom God hath joined together, and so on. And when Jim
picked up his courage in both hands and tried to interfere, she
pushed him back with one hand while she pointed the other at me
and called me a Jezebel.
Chapter XIX. THE HARBISON MAN
She talked for an hour, having got between me and the door, and
she scolded Jim and Bella thoroughly. But they did not hear it,
being occupied with each other, sitting side by side meekly on
the divan with Jim holding Bella's hand under a cushion. She said
they would have to be very good to make up for all the deception,
but it was perfectly clear that it was a relief to her to find
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: while living.
As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled
his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields
of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards
burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of
Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit
these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how
they might be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in
immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the
wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and
presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
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 The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: The footways of the great bridges over the East River were also
closely packed and blocked. Everywhere shopkeepers had left
their shops, men their work, and women and children their homes,
to come out and see the marvel.
"It beat," they declared, "the newspapers."
And from above, many of the occupants of the airships stared with
an equal curiosity. No city in the world was ever so finely
placed as New York, so magnificently cut up by sea and bluff
and river, so admirably disposed to display the tall effects of
buildings, the complex immensities of bridges and mono-railways
and feats of engineering. London, Paris, Berlin, were shapeless,
|
