| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
"Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring
feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."
The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
"I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: CROFTS. Oh no. My wife shant be troubled with business. Youll
not be in it more than youve always been.
VIVIE. _I_ always been! What do you mean?
CROFTS. Only that youve always lived on it. It paid for your
education and the dress you have on your back. Dont turn up your
nose at business, Miss Vivie: where would your Newnhams and
Girtons be without it?
VIVIE [rising, almost beside herself] Take care. I know what
this business is.
CROFTS [starting, with a suppressed oath] Who told you?
VIVIE. Your partner. My mother.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: those payments, Richard. And there are only two in every year, though you
pay them a thousand dollars all at once. It does not seem very prompt on
their part.' I told her that this was the rule. 'But,' she urged, 'don't
you think that a man like Mr. Beverly might be able to get them to make
an exception if he explained the circumstances? Other people may be
satisfied with waiting for little crumbs in this way, but why should we?'
I soon made her understand how it was, however, and I explained many
other facts about investments and the stock market to her, as I learned
them. It was a great pleasure to do this. We came to talk about finance
even more than we talked of my writings; for during that Spring I
invested a good deal more rapidly than I wrote. The Petunias had taken
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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 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: Wasn't it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze
and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house,
embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and
half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost
as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship.
Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!
II
This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over
with Flora to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman;
and all the more for an incident that, presenting itself
the second evening, had deeply disconcerted me.
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