| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: fine and handsome -- and the sweetest old gray-headed
lady, and back of her two young women which I
couldn't see right well. The old gentleman says:
"There; I reckon it's all right. Come in."
As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the
door and barred it and bolted it, and told the young
men to come in with their guns, and they all went in a
big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and
got together in a corner that was out of the range of
the front windows -- there warn't none on the side.
They held the candle, and took a good look at me,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the trail of the Negro.
The creature was Chulk, and he looked down upon the
unconscious man more in curiosity than in hate. The
wearing of the Arab burnoose which Tarzan had placed
upon his person had aroused in the mind of the
anthropoid a desire for similar mimicry of the
Tarmangani. The burnoose, though, had obstructed his
movements and proven such a nuisance that the ape had
long since torn it from him and thrown it away.
Now, however, he saw a Gomangani arrayed in less
cumbersome apparel--a loin cloth, a few copper
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have
been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material
was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors,
commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the
spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to
flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the
snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before.
Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another,
exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of
currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the
forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot
Walden |
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 Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: beauty and of grace. Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to
Hugh as her only friend: that was the sharp thought, the bitter
thought, that drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain.
You laugh at it? Are pain and jealousy less savage realities
down here in this place I am taking you to than in your own
house or your own heart,--your heart, which they clutch at
sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy, be the octave high or
low.
If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag out
from the hearts of these men the terrible tragedy of their
lives, taking it as a symptom of the disease of their class, no
Life in the Iron-Mills |
