| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: barricaded brain; what had he been telling her about them? She
turned to him and their eyes met; his were full of a melancholy
irony.
"Susy, old girl, what's wrong?"
She pulled herself together. "I was thinking, Streff, just
now--when I said I hated the very sound of pearls and
chinchilla--how impossible it was that you should believe me; in
fact, what a blunder I'd made in saying it."
He smiled. "Because it was what so many other women might be
likely to say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?"
She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. "It's going to be
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: the back door on summer mornings, in calico, and ragged
overalls, with baskets of huckleberries on their arm, their
pride gone, a broken and conquered people. She saw them
wild, free, sovereign, and there were no greasy, berry-
peddling Oneidas among them. They were Sioux, and
Pottawatomies (that last had the real Indian sound), and
Winnebagos, and Menomonees, and Outagamis. She made them
taciturn, and beady-eyed, and lithe, and fleet, and every
other adjectival thing her imagination and history book
could supply. The fat and placid Capuchin Fathers on the
hill became Jesuits, sinister, silent, powerful, with
Fanny Herself |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Du-seen leaves at daylight to search for her." He leaned
close to my ear and whispered: "There are many to follow and
help you. Al-tan has agreed to aid Du-seen against the Galus
of Jor; but there are many of us who have combined to rise
against Al-tan and prevent this ruthless desecration of the
laws and customs of the Kro-lu and of Caspak. We will rise as
Luata has ordained that we shall rise, and only thus. No batu
may win to the estate of a Galu by treachery and force of arms
while Chal-az lives and may wield a heavy blow and a sharp spear
with true Kro-lus at his back!"
"I hope that I may live to aid you," I replied. "If I had my
The People That Time Forgot |
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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: everybody may take as much water as he likes, instead of having to
keep the water in little cisterns, where it gets foul and putrid
only too often."
"But will they not waste it then?"
"So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at high
pressure, the waste, which is terrible now--some say that in
London one-third of the water is wasted--begins to lessen; and
both water and expense are saved. If you will only think, you
will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap
running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She
will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to
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