| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: David would chuckle delightedly.
"That's right," he would say. "Keep him guessing, the young rascal.
We men are kittle cattle, Nellie, kittle cattle!"
Even the valet unbent to him, and inquired if the doctor needed a
man at home to look after him and his clothes. David was
enormously tickled.
"Well," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "I'll tell you how I
manage now, and then you'll see. When I want my trousers pressed I
send them downstairs and then I wait in my bathrobe until they come
back. I'm a trifle better off for boots, but you'd have to knock
Mike, my hired man, unconscious before he'd let you touch them."
The Breaking Point |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: But I won't bandy words with you," she pursued, and I well remember
the old-fashioned, artificial sound she gave to the speech.
"You have made me talk, talk! It isn't good for me at all."
I got up at this and told her I would take no more of her time; but she
detained me to ask, "Do you remember, the day I saw you about the rooms,
that you offered us the use of your gondola?" And when I assented,
promptly, struck again with her disposition to make a "good thing"
of being there and wondering what she now had in her eye, she broke out,
"Why don't you take that girl out in it and show her the place?"
"Oh, dear Aunt, what do you want to do with me?" cried the "girl"
with a piteous quaver. "I know all about the place!"
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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 A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: In maiden meditation, fancy free.
Yet markt I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell vpon a little westerne flower;
Before, milke-white: now purple with loues wound,
And maidens call it, Loue in idlenesse.
Fetch me that flower; the hearb I shew'd thee once,
The iuyce of it, on sleeping eye-lids laid,
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Vpon the next liue creature that it sees.
Fetch me this hearbe, and be thou heere againe,
Ere the Leuiathan can swim a league
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
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 Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: hut and then a tearing at the poles which formed the wall.
Presently through the hole thus made slunk a great beast,
pressing its cold muzzle close to his neck.
It was Sheeta, the panther.
The beast snuffed round the prostrate man, whining a little.
There was a limit to the interchange of ideas which could
take place between these two, and so Tarzan could not be
sure that Sheeta understood all that he attempted to
communicate to him. That the man was tied and helpless Sheeta
could, of course, see; but that to the mind of the panther this
would carry any suggestion of harm in so far as his master
The Beasts of Tarzan |
