| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: intervals, and with longer pauses between his words;---his voice
was growing more feeble, his speech more incoherent. His thought
vacillated and distorted, like flame in a wind.
Weirdly the past became confounded with the present; impressions
of sight and of sound interlinked in fastastic affinity,---the
face of Chita Viosca, the murmur of the rising storm. Then
flickers of spectral lightning passed through his eyes, through
his brain, with every throb of the burning arteries; then utter
darkness came,---a darkness that surged and moaned, as the
circumfluence of a shadowed sea. And through and over the
moaning pealed one multitudinous human cry, one hideous
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: told them about the sports of their school days; and these
young folks took the idea that their grandfathers had been
taught their letters by a Centaur, half man and half horse.
Little children, not quite understanding what is said to them,
often get such absurd notions into their heads, you know.
Be that as it may, it has always been told for a fact (and
always will be told, as long as the world lasts), that Chiron,
with the head of a schoolmaster, had the body and legs of a
horse. Just imagine the grave old gentleman clattering and
stamping into the schoolroom on his four hoofs, perhaps
treading on some little fellow's toes, flourishing his switch
Tanglewood Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: the fable of the Flying Dutchman with its conven-
tion of crime and its sentimental retribution fades
like a graceful wreath, like a wisp of white mist.
What is there to say that every one of us cannot
guess for himself? I believe Falk began by going
through the ship, revolver in hand, to annex all the
matches. Those starving wretches had plenty of
matches! He had no mind to have the ship set on
fire under his feet, either from hate or from despair.
He lived in the open, camping on the bridge, com-
manding all the after deck and the only approach
Falk |
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: writers and the modern cults that have assimilated and expended their
philosophy of life. Don't you think you are wasting your time looking
for her?"
"My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove
of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie. A piano," I
went on, "with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand
head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies
always hitched at a post for 'the missus '--and May Martha Mangum to
spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me,
and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they
cannot be found of evenings. That," said I, "is what is to be; and a
Options |
