| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: the enemy. Toward it instantly sprang the yel-
low tongues. A vast quantity of blue smoke
hung before them. A mighty banging made ears
valueless.
The youth ran like a madman to reach the
woods before a bullet could discover him. He
ducked his head low, like a football player. In
his haste his eyes almost closed, and the scene was
a wild blur. Pulsating saliva stood at the corners
of his mouth.
Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was
 The Red Badge of Courage |
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 Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: falsehood."
"No, pardon me," said the lawyer. "I say only that marriages
have existed and do exist."
"But how and why do they exist? They have existed, and they do
exist, for people who have seen, and do see, in marriage
something sacramental, a sacrament that is binding before God.
For such people marriages exist, but to us they are only
hypocrisy and violence. We feel it, and, to clear ourselves, we
preach free love; but, really, to preach free love is only a call
backward to the promiscuity of the sexes (excuse me, he said to
the lady), the haphazard sin of certain raskolniks. The old
 The Kreutzer Sonata |