The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: Jim threw up his hands in a gesture of rage, and
Mary broke into a laugh.
"Why, nonsense, Ella, I asked him to come! This is
Mr. Anthony,"--her voice dropped,--"my fiance."
Ella's figure relaxed with a look of surprise.
"Oh, ja?" she murmured, as if dazed.
"Yes--come in," she said to Jim. "Sorry I was out.
I had to run to the grocer's for the Kitty."
Ella glared at Jim, turned and began to light the
other hall lamps without any attempt at apology.
Jim entered the room with a look of awe, took in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: eyes glistened through his spectacles as he looked at Nekhludoff
and held his narrow hand out to him.
"Well, are you having a pleasant journey?" he asked, with
apparent irony.
"Yes, there is much that is interesting," Nekhludoff answered, as
if he did not notice the irony, but took the question for
politeness, and passed on to Kryltzoff.
Though Nekhludoff appeared indifferent, he was really far from
indifferent, and these words of Novodvoroff, showing his evident
desire to say or do something unpleasant, interfered with the
state of kindness in which Nekhludoff found himself, and he felt
Resurrection |
The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: family vaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men,
women, and children who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding
this countless host to the present human population of the globe.
Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his
species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas
before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the
Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he
despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded,
like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale
will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the
equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.
Moby Dick |
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 The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: ourselves for two weeks."
"Wouldn't it be glorious!"
"We'll try it, anyhow. I'll buy the doggoned thing
if they don't ask too much. Pack your traps. I'll go
down to the shop and get my things. We'll be ready to
start in an hour."
By four o'clock they were seated in the drawing-
room of a Pullman car on the Florida Limited, gazing
entranced at the drab landscape of the Jersey meadows.
Three days later, Jim had landed his boat on a tiny
sand reef a half-mile off the coast of Florida with a
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