| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: have it. Say so from me. Now,' he resumed to me, 'take a cigar by the
way. And don't buy any more Petunias until I tell you the right moment.
Do you see where your Amalgamated Electric has gone to?'"
"I had seen this. It had scored a 20-point rise since my purchase of it;
and I felt very sorry that I had not taken Mr. Beverly's advice and
bought a thousand shares. It had been on a day when I had felt
unaccountably cautious, and I had taken only two hundred and fifty shares
of Amalgamated Electric. There are days when one is cautious and days
when one is venturesome; and they seem to have nothing to do with
results."
"'They're going to increase the dividend,' said Mr. Beverly, as I smoked
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: well as I, reverend Grand Master, know that, were the allied
princes to be successful in Palestine, it would be their first
point of policy to abate the independence of your Order, which,
but for the protection of our holy father the Pope, and the
necessity of employing your valour in the conquest of Palestine,
you would long since have experienced. Give them complete
success, and you will be flung aside, as the splinters of a
broken lance are tossed out of the tilt-yard,"
"There may be truth in what you say," said the Templar, darkly
smiling. "But what were our hopes should the allies withdraw
their forces, and leave Palestine in the grasp of Saladin?"
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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 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: did mean, it was hard to be extremely lucid. "But I wish,
instead of limiting ourselves either to the Bible, or to anecdotes
about the Brothers Adam's wigs, which Culture Hints seems
to regard as the significant point about furniture, we could
study some of the really stirring ideas that are springing up
today--whether it's chemistry or anthropology or labor problems--
the things that are going to mean so terribly much."
Everybody cleared her polite throat.
Madam Chairman inquired, "Is there any other discussion?
Will some one make a motion to adopt the suggestion of Vida
Sherwin--to take up Furnishings and China?"
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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 Moby Dick by Herman Melville: of his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful
devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic
canoes; and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the
wonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.
Chief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an
unusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with
his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted
droopings seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last
been stripped of its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become
dust dry in the sun, then the skeleton was carefully transported up
the Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered
Moby Dick |
