| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: "Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but I've been having a lot of
complaints about you. Now I don't s'pose you ever mean to do wrong, and I
think if you just get a good lesson that'll jog you up a little, you'll turn
out a first-class realtor yet. But I don't see how I can keep you on."
Graff leaned against the filing-cabinet, his hands in his pockets, and
laughed. "So I'm fired! Well, old Vision and Ethics, I'm tickled to death!
But I don't want you to think you can get away with any holier-than-thou
stuff. Sure I've pulled some raw stuff--a little of it--but how could I help
it, in this office?"
"Now, by God, young man--"
"Tut, tut! Keep the naughty temper down, and don't holler, because everybody
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: saw him gazing at Mrs Ramsay was a rapture, equivalent, Lily felt, to the
loves of dozens of young men (and perhaps Mrs Ramsay had never excited the
loves of dozens of young men). It was love, she thought, pretending to
move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to
clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their
symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and
become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all means
should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why that woman pleased
him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him
precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem, so that
he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt when he had proved
To the Lighthouse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: for cowardice is of a surety its own punishment.
To be held paralyzed, with one's back toward some horrible
and unknown danger from the very sound of which the
ferocious Apache warriors turn in wild stampede, as a flock of
sheep would madly flee from a pack of wolves, seems to me
the last word in fearsome predicaments for a man who had
ever been used to fighting for his life with all the energy of a
powerful physique.
Several times I thought I heard faint sounds behind me as
of somebody moving cautiously, but eventually even these
ceased, and I was left to the contemplation of my position
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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 Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: get the tally- sheet of the last load for ye. I've been to the
fort since daylight, and pretty much all night, to tell ye God's
truth. Oh, Gran'pop, but I smashed 'em!" she exclaimed as she
gently removed Patsy's arm and laid him in the old man's lap. She
had picked the little cripple up at the garden gate, where he
always waited for her. "That's the last job that sneakin' Duffy
and Dan McGaw'll ever put up on me. Oh, but ye should'a' minded
the face on him, Gran'pop!"--untying her hood and breaking into a
laugh so contagious in its mirth that even Babcock joined in
without knowing what it was all about.
As she spoke, Tom stood facing her father, hood and ulster off,
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