| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: show, will yer?"
Maggie laughed, as if startled, and drew away from him.
"Naw, Pete," she said, "dat wasn't in it."
"Ah, what deh hell?" urged Pete.
The girl retreated nervously.
"Ah, what deh hell?" repeated he.
Maggie darted into the hall, and up the stairs. She turned
and smiled at him, then disappeared.
Pete walked slowly down the street. He had something of an
astonished expression upon his features. He paused under a lamp-
post and breathed a low breath of surprise.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: slipping through the crowd with an air half obsequious, half
obtrusive, as though, the moment his presence was recognized, it
would swell to the dimensions of the room.
Not wishing to be the means of effecting this enlargement, Lily
quickly transferred her glance to Trenor, to whom the expression
of her gratitude seemed not to have brought the complete
gratification she had meant it to give.
"Hang thanking me--I don't want to be thanked, but I SHOULD like
the chance to say two words to you now and then," he grumbled. "I
thought you were going to spend the whole autumn with us, and
I've hardly laid eyes on you for the last month. Why can't you
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: out into an actual jest, but more usually underlies unspoken all
their deeds. Is it not rather that these men are our forefathers?
that their blood runs in the veins of perhaps three men out of four
in any general assembly, whether in America or in Britain?
Startling as the assertion may be, I believe it to be strictly true.
Be that as it may, I cannot read the stories of your western men,
the writings of Bret Harte, or Colonel John Hay, for instance,
without feeling at every turn that there are the old Norse alive
again, beyond the very ocean which they first crossed, 850 years
ago.
Let me try to prove my point, and end with a story, as I began with
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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 The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: was time to make a supply of cough-drops, and she had been bringing
forth herbs from dark and dry hiding-places, until now the pungent
dust and odor of them had resolved themselves into one mighty
flavor of spearmint that came from a simmering caldron of syrup in
the kitchen. She called it done, and well done, and had
ostentatiously left it to cool, and taken her knitting-work because
Mrs. Fosdick was busy with hers. They sat in the two rocking-
chairs, the small woman and the large one, but now and then I could
see that Mrs. Todd's thoughts remained with the cough-drops. The
time of gathering herbs was nearly over, but the time of syrups and
cordials had begun.
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