| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: colonel's feet.
"Our company got into a section of Cuban scenery where one of the
messiest and most unsung portions of the campaign occurred. We were
out every day capering around in the bushes, and having little
skirmishes with the Spanish troops that looked more like kind of
tired-out feuds than anything else. The war was a joke to us, and of
no interest to them. We never could see it any other way than as a
howling farce-comedy that the San Augustine Rifles were actually
fighting to uphold the Stars and Stripes. And the blamed little
senors didn't get enough pay to make them care whether they were
patriots or traitors. Now and then somebody would get killed. It
Options |
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 Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump smilingness, "Does Paul get as tired
after the winter's work as Georgie does?" then Zilla remembered an injury; and
when Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the world stopped till something had
been done about it.
"Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he just goes crazy, that's all!
You think Paul is so reasonable, oh, yes, and he loves to make out he's a
little lamb, but he's stubborn as a mule. Oh, if you had to live with him--!
You'd find out how sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek so he can have his
own way. And me, I get the credit for being a terrible old crank, but if I
didn't blow up once in a while and get something started, we'd die of dry-rot.
He never wants to go any place and--Why, last evening, just because the car
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