| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: out a lone hand. I don't blame no woman for old man Redruth's
abandonment of barber shops and clean shirts."
Next in order came the passenger who was nobody in particular.
Nameless to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City.
But him you shall see, if the firelight be not too dim, as he responds
to the Judge's call.
A lean form, in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms
wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth,
oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr's, with upturned,
tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish's; a red necktie with a
horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: the stone when it was once broken was comparatively simple. The horses
carried it off in cart-loads, the sheep dragged single blocks, even Muriel
and Benjamin yoked themselves into an old governess-cart and did their
share. By late summer a sufficient store of stone had accumulated, and
then the building began, under the superintendence of the pigs.
But it was a slow, laborious process. Frequently it took a whole day of
exhausting effort to drag a single boulder to the top of the quarry, and
sometimes when it was pushed over the edge it failed to break. Nothing
could have been achieved without Boxer, whose strength seemed equal to
that of all the rest of the animals put together. When the boulder began
to slip and the animals cried out in despair at finding themselves dragged
Animal Farm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: indeed. He made the eighteenth. I could not see the pony at all;
but from the swaying and heaving of that heap of men I knew that
there was something alive inside.
From the wharf Almayer hailed in quavering tones:
"Oh, I say!"
Where he stood he could not see what was going on on deck unless
perhaps the tops of the men's heads; he could only hear the
scuffle, the mighty thuds, as if the ship were being knocked to
pieces. I looked over: "What is it?"
"Don't let them break his legs," he entreated me plaintively.
"Oh, nonsense! He's all right now. He can't move."
Some Reminiscences |
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 Gambara by Honore de Balzac: Hence it was not without some uneasiness that he found himself, on
December 31, 1830, under a Paris thaw, following at the heels of a
woman whose dress betrayed the most abject, inveterate, and long-
accustomed poverty, who was no handsomer than a hundred others to be
seen any evening at the play, at the opera, in the world of fashion,
and who was certainly not so young as Madame de Manerville, from whom
he had obtained an assignation for that very day, and who was perhaps
waiting for him at that very hour.
But in the glance at once tender and wild, swift and deep, which that
woman's black eyes had shot at him by stealth, there was such a world
of buried sorrows and promised joys! And she had colored so fiercely
Gambara |
