| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Revealing day through every cranny spies,
And seems to point her out where she sits weeping,
To whom she sobbing speaks: 'O eye of eyes,
Why pryest thou through my window? leave thy peeping;
Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping:
Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,
For day hath nought to do what's done by night.'
Thus cavils she with every thing she sees:
True grief is fond and testy as a child,
Who wayward once, his mood with nought agrees.
Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: both you and me would go to jail, along with some nice, clean, pious, high-up
traction guns!"
"Well, Stan, looks like we were coming down to cases. That deal--There was
nothing crooked about it. The only way you can get progress is for the
broad-gauged men to get things done; and they got to be rewarded--"
"Oh, for Pete's sake, don't get virtuous on me! As I gather it, I'm fired.
All right. It's a good thing for me. And if I catch you knocking me to any
other firm, I'll squeal all I know about you and Henry T. and the dirty little
lickspittle deals that you corporals of industry pull off for the bigger and
brainier crooks, and you'll get chased out of town. And me--you're right,
Babbitt, I've been going crooked, but now I'm going straight, and the first
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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 A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: everywhere unfathomable; the dark depths in it are darker than in any
other mystery; the colors confused even in the highest lights.
"Cursy was an old playwright, jaded by the life of the theatrical
world. He liked comfort; he liked a luxurious, affluent, easy
existence; he enjoyed being a king in his own house; he liked to be
host to a party of men of letters in a hotel resplendent with royal
luxury, with carefully chosen works of art shining in the setting.
Tullia allowed du Bruel to enthrone himself amid the tribe; there were
plenty of journalists whom it was easy enough to catch and ensnare;
and, thanks to her evening parties and a well-timed loan here and
there, Cursy was not attacked too seriously--his plays succeeded. For
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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 The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: pretty numerous party, stumbling over the stones and rustling
through the underbrush. Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment
that was wont to infest the village tavern, comprehending three
or four individuals who had drunk flip beside the bar-room fire
through all the winters, and smoked their pipes beneath the stoop
through all the summers, since Ethan Brand's departure. Laughing
boisterously, and mingling all their voices together in
unceremonious talk, they now burst into the moonshine and narrow
streaks of firelight that illuminated the open space before the
lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding the spot
with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of Ethan
The Snow Image |
