| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: Jimmie crawled back in the shadows and waited. A noise in the
next room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother was
awake. He grovelled in the gloom, the eyes from out his drawn face
riveted upon the intervening door.
He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to
him. "Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchin
started. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the
door-way of the other room. She crept to him across the floor.
The father had not moved, but lay in the same death-like
sleep. The mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as
if she were in the agonies of strangulation. Out at the window a
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
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 Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: wearisome, worldly excitement; his garments had no pretence to
fashion: all about him indicated the artist. He was, in fact, B. the
painter, a man personally well known to many of those present.
"However strange my words may seem to you," he continued, perceiving
that the general attention was directed to him, "if you will listen to
a short story, you may possibly see that I was right in uttering them.
Everything assures me that this is the portrait which I am looking
for."
A natural curiosity illuminated the faces of nearly all present; and
even the auctioneer paused as he was opening his mouth, and with
hammer uplifted in the air, prepared to listen. At the beginning of
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
