| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: So still and drained of all delight.
This home is now but brick and board
Where bits of furniture are stored.
I used to think I loved each shelf
And room for what it was itself.
And once I thought each picture fine
Because I proudly called it mine.
But now I know they mean no more
Than art works hanging in a store.
Until they went away to roam
I never knew what made it home.
A Heap O' Livin' |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: her afterwards, for she had an extraordinary way of keeping clues.
When she noticed she noticed; that was what it came to. There were
days and days, there were weeks sometimes, of vacancy. This arose
often from Mr. Buckton's devilish and successful subterfuges for
keeping her at the sounder whenever it looked as if anything might
arouse; the sounder, which it was equally his business to mind,
being the innermost cell of captivity, a cage within the cage,
fenced oft from the rest by a frame of ground glass. The counter-
clerk would have played into her hands; but the counter-clerk was
really reduced to idiocy by the effect of his passion for her. She
flattered herself moreover, nobly, that with the unpleasant
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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 Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: names of those who should be summoned from the lips of the indunas,
and day by day people flocked up to the gates of the royal kraal, and,
creeping on their knees before the majesty of the king, praised him
aloud. But he vouchsafed an answer to none. One noble only he caused
to be killed, because he carried in his hand a stick of the royal red
wood, which Chaka himself had given him in bygone years.[1]
[1] This beautiful wood is known in Natal as "red ivory."--ED.
On the last night before the forming of the Ingomboco, the witch-
doctors, male and female, entered the kraal. There were a hundred and
a half of them, and they were made hideous and terrible with the white
bones of men, with bladders of fish and of oxen, with fat of wizards,
Nada the Lily |
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: was succeeding. She ran up-stairs again. The voice had
begun again, but it seemed thicker now. She got into her
clothes, shaking with cold and terror, and yet thinking very
clearly, as she always did in a crisis. She put clean
towels in the bathroom, pushed the table up to the bed, got
a glass of water, straightened the covers, put away the
clothes that the tired woman had left about the room.
Doctor Hertz came. He went through the usual preliminaries,
listened, tapped, counted, straightened up at last.
"Fresh air," he said. "Cold air. All the windows open."
They rigged up a device of screens and sheets to protect the
Fanny Herself |
