| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: was different from my mother. He did not have to marry my mother,
and all his brothers quarrelled with him because he did.
I used to hear the old people at home whisper about it.
They said he could have paid my mother money, and not married her.
But he was older than she was, and he was too kind to treat her like that.
He lived in his mother's house, and she was a poor girl come in to do
the work. After my father married her, my grandmother never let
my mother come into her house again. When I went to my grandmother's
funeral was the only time I was ever in my grandmother's house.
Don't that seem strange?'
While she talked, I lay back in the hot sand and looked up at
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: town found himself in difficulties and unable to occupy the
house. He offered it to me at a bargain. So I took my parents to
this place and told them it was to be theirs. Mother declared
that she certainly never dreamed of having a "magnificent home
like this." She seemed to be greatly pleased. But now I know that
the sparkle in her eyes was for me. Her boy had done all this for
his mother. If I had given her a pair of shoes that pinched her
feet, she would have worn them smiling for my sake. Father looked
out the windows at the neighboring residences. "Who lives there?"
he asked. "And who lives yonder?" I told him the great names of
his neighbors.
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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 Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: think tomorrow would be his last day; so in the evening he went to his
good friend the wolf, who lived in the wood, and told him all his
sorrows, and how his master meant to kill him in the morning. 'Make
yourself easy,' said the wolf, 'I will give you some good advice. Your
master, you know, goes out every morning very early with his wife into
the field; and they take their little child with them, and lay it down
behind the hedge in the shade while they are at work. Now do you lie
down close by the child, and pretend to be watching it, and I will
come out of the wood and run away with it; you must run after me as
fast as you can, and I will let it drop; then you may carry it back,
and they will think you have saved their child, and will be so
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
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 Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: and his mother was thin. He clasped his arms round her,
lifted her a little, and said, "Does that hurt you?"
She shook her head, and he lifted her up; then, at a slow pace,
went onward with his load. The air was now completely cool;
but whenever he passed over a sandy patch of ground
uncarpeted with vegetation there was reflected from its
surface into his face the heat which it had imbibed
during the day. At the beginning of his undertaking he
had thought but little of the distance which yet would
have to be traversed before Blooms-End could be reached;
but though he had slept that afternoon he soon began
Return of the Native |
