| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: meanwhile he had gone on. "Their hating you too moreover--that
also comes to a good deal."
"Ah," said Strether, "your mother doesn't."
Chad, however, loyally stuck to it--loyally, that is, to Strether.
"She will if you don't look out."
"Well, I do look out. I am, after all, looking out. That's just
why," our friend explained, "I want to see her again."
It drew from Chad again the same question. "To see Mother?"
"To see--for the present--Sarah."
"Ah then there you are! And what I don't for the life of me make
out," Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, "is what you GAIN by it."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: of the cattle of Masilo the Pig. When I have killed you I will take a
name who now have none."
Now once more the people laughed, but Jikiza grew mad with wrath, and
sprang up gasping.
"What!" he said, "you dare to speak thus to me, you babe unweaned, to
me the Unconquered, the holder of the axe! Never did I think to live
to hear such talk from a long-legged pup. On to the cattle kraal, to
the cattle kraal, People of the Axe, that I may hew this braggart's
head from his shoulders. He would stand in my place, would he?--the
place that I and my fathers have held for four generations by virtue
of the axe. I tell you all, that presently I will stand upon his head,
Nada the Lily |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: "By thunder, I bet this army'll never see another
new reg'ment like us!"
"You bet!"
"A dog, a woman, an' a walnut tree,
Th' more yeh beat 'em, th' better they be!
That's like us."
"Lost a piler men, they did. If an' ol' woman
swep' up th' woods she'd git a dustpanful."
"Yes, an' if she'll come around ag'in in 'bout
an' hour she'll git a pile more."
The forest still bore its burden of clamor.
The Red Badge of Courage |
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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: parental and filial relation when they are no longer necessary to one
another. The child does this readily enough to form fresh ties,
closer and more fascinating. Parents are not always excluded from
such compensations: it happens sometimes that when the children go
out at the door the lover comes in at the window. Indeed it happens
now oftener than it used to, because people remain much longer in the
sexual arena. The cultivated Jewess no longer cuts off her hair at
her marriage. The British matron has discarded her cap and her
conscientious ugliness; and a bishop's wife at fifty has more of the
air of a _femme galante_ than an actress had at thirty-five in her
grandmother's time. But as people marry later, the facts of age and
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