| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: had
gone out. He rose and tossed it into the fire, in front of which
he remained standing--a slender, eager, restless young figure,
with a touch of hunger in the fine face, strangely like and
unlike
the father, at whom he looked with half-wistful curiosity.
"The fact is, sir," he continued, "there is such a case in my
mind now,
and it is a good deal on my heart, too. So I thought of speaking
to you
about it to-night. You remember Tom Rollins, the Junior who was
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: a most daring, bold fellow, commanded under him. The savages came
forward like lions; and our men, which was the worst of their fate,
had no advantage in their situation; only that Will Atkins, who now
proved a most useful fellow, with six men, was planted just behind
a small thicket of bushes as an advanced guard, with orders to let
the first of them pass by and then fire into the middle of them,
and as soon as he had fired, to make his retreat as nimbly as he
could round a part of the wood, and so come in behind the
Spaniards, where they stood, having a thicket of trees before them.
When the savages came on, they ran straggling about every way in
heaps, out of all manner of order, and Will Atkins let about fifty
Robinson Crusoe |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: his sentimental days. He's quite a character around New York--a denizen of
Broadway."
"Who is he, anyhow, an actor?"
"No."
"A dentist?"
"Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added
coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919."
"Fixed the World's Series?" I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World's Series
had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have
thought of it as a thing that merely HAPPENED, the end of some
The Great Gatsby |
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 Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: A flat and yet decided negative -
Photographers love such.
There comes a welcome summons - hope revives,
And fading eyes grow bright, and pulses quicken:
Incessant pop the corks, and busy knives
Dispense the tongue and chicken.
Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
And all is tangled talk and mazy motion -
Much like a waving field of golden grain,
Or a tempestuous ocean.
And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
|
