| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: And one time Bessie Bell was at a pretty house and somebody sat her
on a little low chair and said: `` Keep still, Bessie Bell.''
She kept still so long that at last she began to be afraid to move
at all, and she got afraid even to crook up her little finger for
fear it would pop off loud,--she had kept still so long that all her
round little fingers and her round little legs felt so stiff.
Then one, great grown person said: ``She seems a very quiet child.''
And the other said: ``She is a very quiet child--sometimes.''
But just then Bessie Bell turned her head, and though her round
little neck felt stiff it did not pop!--and she saw--something in
a corner that was blue, green, and brown, and soft, and she forgot
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: quickly and silently, as if they feared to speak lest the city
should vanish.
The wall of the city was very low, a child could see over it,
for it was made only of precious stones, which are never large.
The gate of the city was not like a gate a all, for it was not
barred with iron or wood, but only a single pearl, softly
gleaming,
marked the place where the wall ended and the entrance lay open.
A person stood there whose face was bright and grave, and whose
robe
was like the flower of the lily, not a woven fabric, but a living
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: "Do you know any particulars of your mother's family?" he continued.
"No; she never liked to speak of them. She was a very generous,
honorable woman," said Will, almost angrily.
"I do not wish to allege anything against her. Did she never mention
her mother to you at all?"
"I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the
reason of her running away. She said `poor mother' in a pitying tone."
"That mother became my wife," said Bulstrode, and then paused a
moment before he added, "you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I
said before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes.
I was enriched by that marriage--a result which would probably
Middlemarch |
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 Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: its good points. Why couldn't you make the trade get your
viewpoint?"
"This is why: Out in Manistee and Oshkosh and Terre Haute, the
girls have just really learned the trick of walking in tight
skirts. It's as impossible to convince a Middle West buyer that
the exaggerated full skirt is going to be worn next summer as it
would be to prove to him that men are going to wear sunbonnets.
They thought I was trying to sell 'em masquerade costumes. I may
believe in it, and you may believe in it, and T. A.; but the
girls from Joplin--well, they're from Joplin. And they're
waiting to hear from headquarters."
Emma McChesney & Co. |
