| 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: thrash and drift of your daydreams, and take the very thrills
off your back, as it were."
After some days of unsuccessful effort, Flavia withdrew
herself, and Imogen found Hamilton ready to catch her when she
was tossed afield. He seemed only to have been awaiting this
crisis, and at once their old intimacy reestablished itself as a
thing inevitable and beautifully prepared for. She convinced
herself that she had not been mistaken in him, despite all the
doubts that had come up in later years, and this renewal of faith
set more than one question thumping in her brain. "How did he,
how can he?" she kept repeating with a tinge of her childish
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 The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: unto himself--to dwell with himself alone, even as God dwells
with Himself alone, shares His repose with none, and considers
the nature of His own administration, intent upon such thoughts
as are meet unto Himself. So should we also be able to converse
with ourselves, to need none else beside, to sigh for no
distraction, to bend our thoughts upon the Divine Administration,
and how we stand related to all else; to observe how human
accidents touched us of old, and how they touch us now; what
things they are that still have power to hurt us, and how they
may be cured or removed; to perfect what needs perfecting as
Reason would direct.
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
| 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: more than princely. By day, the grounds afforded us both golf and tennis,
the stables provided motor cars and horses to ride or drive over
admirable roads, through beautiful scenery that was embellished by a
magnificent autumn season. At nightfall, the great house itself received
us in the arms of supreme comfort, fed us sumptuously, and after dinner
ministered to our middle-aged bodies with chairs and sofas of the highest
development.
The plan devised by our hostess, Mrs. Davenport, that a story should be
told by one of us each evening, had met with courtesy, but not I with
immediate enthusiasm. But Mrs. Davenport had chosen her guests with her
usual wisdom, and after the first experiment, story telling proved so
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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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Whom our much-loved mistress favour
As her own acknowledged servant?
I am blest by kindly Fortune's
Tokens true, in silence pray'd for!
And I feel myself held captive,
To her service now devoted.
Yet, e'en while I, thus enraptured,
Thus adorn'd, am proudly wand'ring,
See! yon wantons are entwining,
Void of strife, with secret ardour,
Other nets, each fine and finer,
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