| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: nature sometimes hid astonishing secrets. But in spite of this
suggestion of hardness he felt that the unerring taste that
Treffinger had always shown in larger matters had not deserted
him when he came to the choosing of a wife, and he admitted that
he could not himself have selected a woman who looked more as
Treffinger's wife should look.
While he was explaining the purpose of his frequent visits
to the studio she heard him with courteous interest. "I have
read, I think, everything that has been published on Sir Hugh
Treffinger's work, and it seems to me that there is much left to
be said," he concluded.
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw:
which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her
ears which Cloten dreaded: she may not have seen the beauty of it,
whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are
nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her.
And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest
not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele?
Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense. The timid
cough of the minor poet was never heard from him.
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme
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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 The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: It is an ugly name, that of "The Masses," for the great majority of
human beings in a nation. He who uses it speaks of them not as
human beings, but as things; and as things not bound together in one
living body, but lying in a fortuitous heap. A swarm of ants is not
a mass. It has a polity and a unity. Not the ants but the fir-
needles and sticks, of which the ants have piled their nest, are a
mass.
The term, I believe, was invented during the Ancien Regime. Whether
it was or not, it expresses very accurately the life of the many in
those days. No one would speak, if he wished to speak exactly, of
the masses of the United States; for there every man is, or is
|
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 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: listening to her own praise; of being thanked at least,
on his sister's account, for her kindness in thus becoming
her visitor; of hearing it ranked as real friendship,
and described as creating real gratitude. His sister,
he said, was uncomfortably circumstanced--she had no female
companion--and, in the frequent absence of her father,
was sometimes without any companion at all.
"But how can that be?" said Catherine. "Are not you
with her?"
"Northanger is not more than half my home;
I have an establishment at my own house in Woodston,
Northanger Abbey |
