| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: made up, as they say, to the good lady of Folkestone, that good
lady would not have pushed him over the cliff. Strange as she was
to behold I knew of cases in which she had been obliged to
administer that shove. I went to New York to paint a couple of
portraits; but I found, once on the spot, that I had counted
without Chicago, where I was invited to blot out this harsh
discrimination by the production of some dozen. I spent a year in
America and should probably have spent a second had I not been
summoned back to England by alarming news from my mother. Her
strength had failed, and as soon as I reached London I hurried down
to Folkestone, arriving just at the moment to offer a welcome to
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: plastic was the eventual decline of the human race.
When about nine tenths of the persons on the planet consisted of the
precisely fabricated humakins and only one tenth of the really
human, quite an odd and unexpected situation arose. It had become
so unusual to see, for example, a woman wearing glasses or a man
with wind-blown hair that such a detail now took on a natural appeal
to some of the other humans.
One bright morning at breakfast in a fancy resort dining room, a
human female, almost as lovely as a humakin, sat chatting with a
humakin male who had condescended to sit with her. Suddenly she
inadvertently spilled a glass of tomato juice onto her white tennis
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: nature of Madame de Dey's illness in a manner that hoodwinked the
community. He related to a gouty old dame, that Madame de Dey had
almost died of a sudden attack of gout in the stomach, but had been
relieved by a remedy which the famous doctor, Tronchin, had once
recommended to her,--namely, to apply the skin of a freshly-flayed
hare on the pit of the stomach, and to remain in bed without making
the slightest movement for two days. This tale had prodigious success,
and the doctor of Carentan, a royalist "in petto," increased its
effect by the manner in which he discussed the remedy.
Nevertheless, suspicions had taken too strong a root in the minds of
some obstinate persons, and a few philosophers, to be thus dispelled;
|
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 Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: did, into that of which he could see neither the beginning nor
the ending. But being barely one-and-twenty years of age, and
having an adventurous disposition that would have carried him
into almost anything that possessed a smack of uncertainty or
danger about it, he contrived to say, in a pretty easy tone
(though God knows how it was put on for the occasion):
"Well, then, if that be so, and if the Royal Sovereign is indeed
come in, why, I'll join you, since you are so kind as to ask me."
And therewith he went across to the other table, carrying his
pipe with him, and sat down and began smoking, with all the
appearance of ease he could assume upon the occasion.
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
