| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: fascinated, unable to tell how much he saw was real, how
much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty
here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation
and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the
burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its
somber portent an unshakable foreboding of calamity.
He wrestled with the spell as if it were a physical foe. Reason
and intelligence had their voices in his mind; but the moment was
not one wherein these things could wholly control. He felt life
strong withing his breast, yet there, a step away, was death,
yawning, glaring, smoky, red. It was a moment--an hour for a
Desert Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: got his biggest strawberry book and sat on the back steps to catch the
last of the reading light. He thought he saw the figure of someone in
his strawberry patch. He laid aside the book, got his whip and hurried
forth to see.
It was Panchita. She had slipped through the picket fence and was
half-way across the patch. She stopped when she saw him and looked at
him without wavering.
A sudden rage--a humiliating flush of unreasoning wrath--came over Dry
Valley. For this child he had made himself a motley to the view. He
had tried to bribe Time to turn backward for himself; he had--been
made a fool of. At last he had seen his folly. There was a gulf
Heart of the West |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: to dinner, and once or twice began even to calculate
the number of young dancing people in the neighbourhood.
But then it was such a dead time of year, no wild-fowl,
no game, and the Lady Frasers were not in the country.
And it all ended, at last, in his telling Henry one morning
that when he next went to Woodston, they would take him
by surprise there some day or other, and eat their mutton
with him. Henry was greatly honoured and very happy,
and Catherine was quite delighted with the scheme.
"And when do you think, sir, I may look forward to this
pleasure? I must be at Woodston on Monday to attend the
Northanger Abbey |
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 Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: "They couldn't eat common beef and mutton, I'm sure!" Lady Muriel
interrupted.
"True, my child, I was forgetting. Each set must have its own cattle
and sheep."
"And its own vegetation," I added. "What could a cow, an inch high,
do with grass that waved far above its head?"
"That is true. We must have a pasture within a pasture, so to speak.
The common grass would serve our inch-high cows as a green forest of
palms, while round the root of each tall stem would stretch a tiny
carpet of microscopic grass. Yes, I think our scheme will work fairly
well. And it would be very interesting, coming into contact with the
Sylvie and Bruno |
