| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.
IX.
Fair was the morn when the fair queen of love,
* * * * * *
Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove,
For Adon's sake, a youngster proud and wild;
Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill:
Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds;
She, silly queen, with more than love's good will,
Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds:
'Once,' quoth she, 'did I see a fair sweet youth
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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 Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: the train satisfied something in her. An old lady sitting in an adjoining
seat with a companion amused Carley by the remark: "I wish we didn't go so
fast. People nowadays haven't time to draw a comfortable breath. Suppose we
should run off the track!"
Carley had no fear of express trains, or motor cars, or transatlantic
liners; in fact, she prided herself in not being afraid of anything. But
she wondered if this was not the false courage of association with a crowd.
Before this enterprise at hand she could not remember anything she had
undertaken alone. Her thrills seemed to be in abeyance to the end of her
journey. That night her sleep was permeated with the steady low whirring of
the wheels. Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in the darkness while the
The Call of the Canyon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: girl, with a double chin. The sharp-tongued Kitty O'Hara
used to say that being an old maid was a great deal like
death by drowning--a really delightful sensation when you
ceased struggling.
Norah has pleaded with me to be more like other women
of my age, and for her sake I've tried. She has led me
about to bridge parties and tea fights, and I have tried
to act as though I were enjoying it all, but I knew that
I wasn't getting on a bit. I have come to the conclusion
that one year of newspapering counts for two years of
ordinary, existence, and that while I'm twenty-eight in
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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 Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: a mood of profound despondency, to which her expectation of an evening
alone with Rodney contributed. They were very good friends again,
better friends, they both said, than ever before. So far as she was
concerned this was true. There were many more things in him than she
had guessed until emotion brought them forth--strength, affection,
sympathy. And she thought of them and looked at the faces passing, and
thought how much alike they were, and how distant, nobody feeling
anything as she felt nothing, and distance, she thought, lay
inevitably between the closest, and their intimacy was the worst
presence of all. For, "Oh dear," she thought, looking into a
tobacconist's window, "I don't care for any of them, and I don't care
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