| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: And knew not what they meant; for still my voice
Rang false: but smiling 'Not for thee,' she said,
O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan
Shall burst her veil: marsh-divers, rather, maid,
Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake
Grate her harsh kindred in the grass: and this
A mere love-poem! O for such, my friend,
We hold them slight: they mind us of the time
When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men,
That lute and flute fantastic tenderness,
And dress the victim to the offering up,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: her bracelet on a salad plate, garnished with romaine. He had
found it in the furnace room, he said, where she must have
dropped it. And he looked at me stealthily, to approve his
mendacity!
Every one was famished, and as they ate they discussed the board
in the area way, and pretended to deride it as a clever bit of
press work, to revive a dying sensation. No one was deceived;
Anne's pearls and the attempt to escape, coming just after,
pointed only to one thing. I looked around the table, dazed.
Flannigan, almost the only unknown quantity, might have tried to
escape the night before, but he would not have been in dress
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: Professor Pearson thinks that it is especially necessary to awaken the
hardiest stocks to this duty. These stocks, he says, are to be found
chiefly among the skilled artisan class, the intelligent working
class. Here is a fine combination of health and hardy vigor, of sound
body and sound mind.
Professor Pearson and his school of biometrics here ignore or at least
fail to record one of those significant ``correlations'' which form
the basis of his method. The publications of the Eugenics Laboratory
all tend to show that a high rate of fertility is correlated with
extreme poverty, recklessness, deficiency and delinquency; similarly,
that among the more intelligent, this rate of fertility decreases. But
|
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 One Basket by Edna Ferber: periods ranging through all the Louis. The living room was
mostly rose color. It was like an unhealthy and bloated boudoir.
And yet there was nothing sybaritic or uncleanly in the sight of
this paunchy, middle-aged man sinking into the rosy-cushioned
luxury of his ridiculous home. It was a frank and naive
indulgence of long-starved senses, and there was in it a great
resemblance to the rolling-eyed ecstasy of a schoolboy smacking
his lips over an all-day sucker.
The war went on, and on, and on. And the money continued to roll
in-- a flood of it. Then, one afternoon, Eva, in town on
shopping bent, entered a small, exclusive, and expensive shop on
One Basket |
