| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: feel the scalp upon her head contract with fright. Her terror-
filled gaze was frozen upon that awful figure that loomed
so large and sinister above her, for the thing had moved! She
had seen it with her own eyes. There could be no mistake--
no hallucination of overwrought nerves about it. The Blentz
Princess was moving slowly toward her!
Like one in a trance the girl rose from her chair, her eyes
glued upon the awful apparition that seemed creeping upon
her. Slowly she withdrew toward the opposite side of the
chamber. As the painting moved more quickly the truth
flashed upon her--it was mounted on a door.
 The Mad King |
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 Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: the paper, so white. And the way we tear it up, or crumple
it, and throw it in the waste basket. Just a piece of
paper, don't you see what I mean? Just a piece of paper,
and yet all that--" she stopped and frowned a little, and
grew inarticulate, and gave it up with a final, "Don't you
see what I mean, Mother? Don't you see what I mean?"
Molly Brandeis looked at her daughter in a startled way,
like one who, walking tranquilly along an accustomed path,
finds himself confronting a new and hitherto unsuspected
vista, formed by a peculiar arrangement of clouds, perhaps,
or light, or foliage, or all three blended. "I see what you
 Fanny Herself |