| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: "I'm going to ride Dolly in."
"No, you're not," he announced. "It would be bad discipline. After what has
happened I am simply compelled to ride her in myself."
But it was a very weak and very sick mare he rode, stumbling and halting,
afflicted with nervous jerks and recurring muscular spasms--the aftermath of
the tremendous orgasm through which she had passed.
"I feel like a book of verse and a hammock, after all that has happened," Lute
said, as they rode into camp.
It was a summer camp of city-tired people, pitched in a grove of towering
redwoods through whose lofty boughs the sunshine trickled down, broken and
subdued to soft light and cool shadow. Apart from the main camp were the
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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 Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: the hunt for something to do to supplement her resources, this
afternoon she had rashly promised to walk. The morning, then,
must be given up to work. But after all she did little.
For an hour, perhaps, she practiced. The little Bulgarian paused
outside her door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter
Byrne, listening while he sorted lecture memoranda at his little
table in bathrobe and slippers, absently filed the little note
with the others--where he came across it months later--next to a
lecture on McBurney's Point, and spent a sad hour or so over it.
Over all the sordid little pension, with its odors of food and
stale air, its spotted napery and dusty artificial flowers, the
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: possession of the raft. Though they were uttering awful groans and
imprecations, they dared not resist the grenadier, for in truth they
were so closely packed together, that a push to one man might send
half of them overboard. This danger was so pressing that a cavalry
captain endeavored to get rid of the grenadier; but the latter, seeing
the hostile movement of the officer, seized him round the waist and
flung him into the water, crying out,--
"Ha! ha! my duck, do you want to drink? Well, then, drink!-- Here are
two places," he cried. "Come, major, toss me the little woman and
follow yourself. Leave that old fossil, who'll be dead by to-morrow."
"Make haste!" cried the voice of all, as one man.
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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 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: child."
"Yes, it's very wrong," said Anna, and taking her son by the
shoulder she looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance
that bewildered and delighted the boy, and she kissed him. "Leave
him to me," she said to the astonished governess, and not letting
go of her son, she sat down at the table, where coffee was set
ready for her.
"Mamma! I ...I ...didn't . . ." he said, trying to make out
from her expression what was in store for him in regard to the
peaches.
"Seryozha," she said, as soon as the governess had left the room,
Anna Karenina |
