| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Trying his truth and his long-sufferance,
Till half-another year had slipt away.
By this the lazy gossips of the port,
Abhorrent of a calculation crost,
Began to chafe as at a personal wrong.
Some thought that Philip did but trifle with her;
Some that she but held off to draw him on;
And others laugh'd at her and Philip too,
As simple folks that knew not their own minds;
And one, in whom all evil fancies clung
Like serpent eggs together, laughingly
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Of what we owe to fifty years.
His cleansing heritage of taste
Paraded neither want nor waste;
And what he needed for his fee
To live, he borrowed graciously.
He never told us what he was,
Or what mischance, or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most, unplayable;
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: time, and that there was no hope for a captured spy.
"And - Jean?"
They did not know of Jean; so she told them, still in that far-away
voice. And at last Mrs. Travers brought an early letter of Mrs.
Cameron's and read a part of it aloud.
"He seems to have been delirious," she read, holding her reading glasses
to her eyes. "A friend of his, very devoted to him, was missing, and he
learned this somehow.
"He escaped from the hospital and got away in an ambulance. He came
straight here and wakened us. There had been a wounded man in the
machine, and he left him on our doorstep. When I got to the door the
|
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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: quite impossible; but it is only so far even difficult as it is
difficult to conquer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear
what we are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine,
that these mean and shallow vices are unconquerable by Christian
women.
And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may think should have
been put first, but I put it third, because we must feed and clothe
people where we find them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing
lodgment for them means a great deal of vigorous legislature, and
cutting down of vested interests that stand in the way, and after
that, or before that, so far as we can get it, thorough sanitary and
|
