| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!'"
Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the
eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous,
from the dissolving night.
"God sees everything," repeated Wilson.
"That's an advertisement," Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn
away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a
long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.
By six o'clock Michaelis was worn out, and grateful for the sound of a
car stopping outside. It was one of the watchers of the night before
who had promised to come back, so he cooked breakfast for three, which
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: He was not more than fifty yards from shore when he
went under. I watched the spot where he had disap-
peared, and in a moment I saw his head reappear.
The look of dumb misery in his eyes struck a chord in
my breast, for I love dogs. I forgot that he was a vicious,
primordial wolf-thing--a man-eater, a scourge, and a
terror. I saw only the sad eyes that looked like the eyes
of Raja, my dead collie of the outer world.
I did not stop to weigh and consider. In other words,
I did not stop to think, which I believe must be the
way of men who do things--in contradistinction to
Pellucidar |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: noble sinks below his order. More deeply; since, with us, rank is the
grosser substance of wealth and a splendid establishment, and has no
spiritual existence after the death of these, but dies hopelessly along
with them. And, therefore, since we have been unfortunate enough to
introduce our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture, we would entreat
for a mood of due solemnity in the spectators of her fate. Let us behold,
in poor Hepzibah, the immemorial, lady--two hundred years old, on this
side of the water, and thrice as many on the other, --with her antique
portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms, records and traditions, and her
claim, as joint heiress, to that princely territory at the eastward,
no longer a wilderness, but a populous fertility,--born, too, in
House of Seven Gables |
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 Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Back to the troubled waters of this shore
Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now
The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,
Hence! Hence! I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.
More barren - ay, those arms will never lean
Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul
In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;
Some other head must wear that aureole,
For I am hers who loves not any man
Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian.
Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,
|
