| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: was not scaled until be married Alicia Van Der Pool.
I cite the Matterhorn, for just so high and cool and
white and inaccessible was this daughter of the old
burghers. The social Alps that ranged about her
over whose bleak passes a thousand climbers struggled
-- reached only to her knees. She towered in her own
atmosphere, serene, chaste, prideful, wading in no
fountains, dining no monkeys, breeding no dogs for
bench shows. She was a Van Der Pool. Fountains
were made to play for her; monkeys were made for
other people's ancestors; dogs, she understood, were
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: friends; but let me assure you that while I doubt the friendship
of the world, I have never doubted yours. I beg you therefore to
settle all my affairs, and I trust to you to get as much as you
can out of my possessions. By this time you know my situation. I
have nothing left, and I intend to go at once to the Indies. I
have just written to all the people to whom I think I owe money,
and you will find enclosed a list of their names, as correct as I
can make it from memory. My books, my furniture, my pictures, my
horses, etc., ought, I think, to pay my debts. I do not wish to
keep anything, except, perhaps, a few baubles which might serve as
the beginning of an outfit for my enterprise. My dear Alphonse, I
Eugenie Grandet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: The Bellman exclaimed in a fright.
"We have lost half the day. Any further delay,
And we sha'nt catch a Snark before night!"
Fit the Eighth
THE VANISHING
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
They shuddered to think that the chase might fail,
And the Beaver, excited at last,
The Hunting of the Snark |
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 Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: Now, a week or two after the wedding, and after all the gay
doings had ended, a grand hunt was declared, and the king and his
new son-in-law and all the court went to it. That was just such a
chance as the old magician had been waiting for; so the night
before the hunting-party returned he climbed the walls of the
garden, and so came to the wonderful palace that the soldier had
built out of nothing at all, and there stood three men keeping
guard so that no one might enter.
But little that troubled the magician. He began to mutter spells
and strange words, and all of a sudden he was gone, and in his
place was a great black ant, for he had changed himself into an
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