| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: shoes. As she viewed Paris thus grimly awakening, she was overcome
by tender, girlish feelings, by a yearning for the country, for
idyllic scenes, for things soft and white.
"Now guess what you're to do," she said, coming back to Steiner.
"You're going to take me to the Bois de Boulogne, and we'll drink
milk there."
She clapped her hands in childish glee. Without waiting for the
banker's reply--he naturally consented, though he was really rather
bored and inclined to think of other things--she ran off to throw a
pelisse over her shoulders. In the drawing room there was now no
one with Steiner save the band of young men. These had by this time
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we
have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the
actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in
fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale
hardware business that my father carries on to-day.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I'm supposed to look like him--with
special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in
father's office I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a
century after my father, and a little later I participated in that
delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the
counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being
The Great Gatsby |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Norada and that old brick house at Haverly lay his story. Ten
years of it. He was closing his bag when he remembered the little
girl in the blue dress, at the theater. He straightened and scowled.
After a moment he snapped the bag shut. Damn it all, if Clark had
chosen to He up with a girl, that was on Clark's conscience, not his.
But he was vaguely uncomfortable.
"It's a queer world, Joe," he observed to the waiter, who had come
in for the breakfast dishes.
"Yes, sir. It is that," said Joe.
XII
DURING all the long night Dick sat by David's bedside. Earlier in
The Breaking Point |
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 A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: By an Athenian Eunuch, to the Harpe
The. Wee'l none of that. That haue I told my Loue
In glory of my kinsman Hercules
Lis. The riot of the tipsie Bachanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer, in their rage?
The. That is an old deuice, and it was plaid
When I from Thebes came last a Conqueror
Lis. The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death
of learning, late deceast in beggerie
The. That is some Satire keene and criticall,
Not sorting with a nuptiall ceremonie
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
