| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: the expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever
was born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single
week I spend -- but never mind about that -- you'd
never believe it anyway."
And so we went gadding along, dropping in here
and there, pricing things, and gossiping with the shop-
keepers about the riot, and now and then running
across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of
shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families
whose homes had been taken from them and their
parents butchered or hanged. The raiment of Marco
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: endowed with the natural artfulness of women, made her old Bruyn come
and go like a miller's mule.
"My good Bruyn, I want this! Bruyn, I want that--go on Bruyn!" Bruyn!
Bruyn! And always Bruyn in such a way that Bruyn was more worn-out by
the clemency of his wife than he would have been by her unkindness.
She turned his brain wishing that everything should be in scarlet,
making him turn everything topsy-turvy at the least movement of her
eyebrow, and when she was sad the seneschal distracted, would say to
everything from his judicial seat, "Hang him!" Another would have died
like a fly at this conflict with the maid's innocence, but Bruyn was
of such an iron nature that it was difficult to finish him off. One
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
|
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 The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: long-drawn-out battle not to be won merely by saying right was right. He
loved Mescal, she loved him; and something born in him with his new
health, with the breath of this sage and juniper forest, with the sight
of purple canyons and silent beckoning desert, made him fiercely tena-
cious of all that life had come to mean for him. He could not give her
up--and yet--
Twilight forced Hare from his lofty retreat, and he trod his way
campward, weary and jaded, but victorious over himself. He thought he
had renounced his hope of Mescal; he returned with a resolve to be true
to August, and to himself; bitterness he would not allow himself to feel.
And yet he feared the rising in him of a new spirit akin to that of the
The Heritage of the Desert |
