| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: The passage in which we now found ourselves was evidently no
work of nature. Even in the semidarkness the mark of man's hand
was apparent. And the ceiling was low; another proof, for dwarfs
do not build for the accommodation of giants. But I had some faint
idea of the pitiful inadequacy of their tools, and I found myself
reflecting on the stupendous courage of the men who had undertaken
such a task, even allowing for the fact that four hundred years had
been allowed them for its completion.
Soon we reached a veritable maze of these passages. We must
have taken a dozen or more turns, first to the right, then to the
left. I had been marking our way on my memory as well as possible,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: with the old man panting there, and his eyes set and looking
like a person that was dying. None of us could budge;
but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down,
and stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head
up against her and begun to stroke it and pet it with
her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and we done it,
going out very quiet, like the dead was there.
Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn,
and saying how different it was now to what it was last
summer when we was here and everything was so peaceful
and happy and everybody thought so much of Uncle Silas,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: all, that he accepted it very thankfully. And thus I got over
the fraud of passing for a fortune without money, and cheating
a man into marrying me on pretence of a fortune; which, by
the way, I take to be one of the most dangerous steps a woman
can take, and in which she runs the most hazard of being
ill-used afterwards.
My husband, to give him his due, was a man of infinite good
nature, but he was no fool; and finding his income not suited
to the manner of living which he had intended, if I had brought
him what he expected, and being under a disappointment in
his return of his plantations in Virginia, he discovered many
Moll Flanders |
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 One Basket by Edna Ferber: think I can't do anything, the way you talk."
"Oh, don't I! I guess you know what I think."
"Well, it isn't the cake I mean. It's something else."
"Fried chicken!"
"Oh, now you've gone and guessed it." She pouted prettily.
"You asked me to, didn't you?"
Then they laughed together, as at something exquisitely witty.
Down the river, drifting, rowing. Tessie pointed to a house half
hidden among the trees on the farther shore: "There's Hatton's
camp. They say they have grand times there with their swell
crowd some Saturdays and Sundays. If I had a house like that,
One Basket |
