| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the tree on which the prize hangs, and that whoever approaches
him runs the risk of being devoured at a mouthful."
"True," said the king, with a smile that did not look
particularly good-natured. "Very true, young man. But there are
other things as hard, or perhaps a little harder, to be done
before you can even have the privilege of being devoured by the
dragon. For example, you must first tame my two brazen-footed
and brazen-lunged bulls, which Vulcan, the wonderful
blacksmith, made for me. There is a furnace in each of their
stomachs; and they breathe such hot fire out of their mouths
and nostrils, that nobody has hitherto gone nigh them without
Tanglewood Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: cultured or refined than she. This may seem a strange statement,
but the quiet dignity that she manifested on all occasions and
her charming manners are not often met with. I have never felt on
entering a drawing-room such an atmosphere of refinement as
seemed to surround her.
That the Chinese take very kindly to foreign medicine there is no
doubt, though it is sometimes amusing how they go back to their
own native methods.
One day my husband brought home a physiological chart about the
size of an ordinary man. It was covered with black spots and I
asked him the reason for them.
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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 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I made the best of it, but I felt wan.
"It depends on what you call `much'!"
"Yes"--with all accommodation--"everything depends!"
On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently
reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step.
He remained there awhile, with his forehead against the glass,
in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull
things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of "work,"
behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself
with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments
of torment that I have described as the moments of my knowing
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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 Herland by Charlotte Gilman: the gods, and placed the proud mother in the Temple of Maaia
--their Goddess of Motherhood--under strict watch. And there,
as years passed, this wonder-woman bore child after child, five
of them--all girls.
I did my best, keenly interested as I have always been in
sociology and social psychology, to reconstruct in my mind the
real position of these ancient women. There were some five or six
hundred of them, and they were harem-bred; yet for the few
preceding generations they had been reared in the atmosphere of
such heroic struggle that the stock must have been toughened
somewhat. Left alone in that terrific orphanhood, they had clung
Herland |
