| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: In three weeks he had consumed all his stock of ardent spirits.
But his continual drunkenness only lulled his terror, which awoke
more furiously than ever, as soon as it was impossible for him to
calm it by drinking. His fixed idea, which had been intensified
by a month of drunkenness, and which was continually increasing
in his absolute solitude? pene-trated him like a gimlet. He now
walked about his house like a wild beast in its cage, putting his
eat to the door to listen if the other were there, and defying
him through the wall. Then as soon as he dozed, overcome by
fatigue, he heard the voice which made him leap to his feet.
At last one night, as cowards do when driven to extremity, he
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: As Demetrio began to tell that famous exploit, the
men realized the danger they were facing. What if the
enemy, instead of being two days away, was hiding some-
where among the underbrush on the terrible hill through
whose gorge they now advanced? None dared show the
slightest fear. Not one of Demetrio Macias' men dared
say, "I shall not move another inch!"
So, when firing began in the distance where the van-
guard was marching, no one felt surprised. The recruits
turned back hurriedly, retreating in shameful flight,
searching for a way out of the canyon.
The Underdogs |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: his jesting allusions to the directress (which he still
continued) were heard with a grim calm very different from the
petulant pleasure they were formerly wont to excite. For a long
time Pelet bore with my frigid demeanour very patiently; he even
increased his attentions; but finding that even a cringing
politeness failed to thaw or move me, he at last altered too; in
his turn he cooled; his invitations ceased; his countenance
became suspicious and overcast, and I read in the perplexed yet
brooding aspect of his brow, a constant examination and
comparison of premises, and an anxious endeavour to draw thence
some explanatory inference. Ere long, I fancy, he succeeded, for
The Professor |
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 Options by O. Henry: Well, where she landed four days later was in as neat a five-room flat
on East Twenty-third Street as you ever walked sideways through--and
she's been Mrs. Magee ever since."
THE MOMENT OF VICTORY
Ben Granger is a war veteran aged twenty-nine--which should enable you
to guess the war. He is also principal merchant and postmaster of
Cadiz, a little town over which the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico
perpetually blow.
Ben helped to hurl the Don from his stronghold in the Greater
Antilles; and then, hiking across half the world, he marched as a
corporal-usher up and down the blazing tropic aisles of the open-air
Options |
