| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: I dropped my gun out of my holster, and she went way to the
bottom, but I wouldn't have gone back for six guns. Larry picked
it up for me.
So we went along, me on the rim-rock and around the barrancas,
and Larry in the bottom carryin' of the kid.
By and by we came to the ranch house, stopped to wait. The
minute Larry hove in sight everybody was out to once, and in two
winks the woman had that baby. Thy didn't see me at all, but I
could hear, plain enough, what they said. Larry told how he had
found her in the cave, and all about the lion tracks, and the
woman cried and held the kid close to her, and thanked him about
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: dear," she added, by way of afterthought, "you DO obliterate
things!"
Part 8
They found themselves next day talking love to one another high
up on some rocks above a steep bank of snow that overhung a
precipice on the eastern side of the Fee glacier. By this time
Capes' hair had bleached nearly white, and his skin had become a
skin of red copper shot with gold. They were now both in a state
of unprecedented physical fitness. And such skirts as Ann
Veronica had had when she entered the valley of Saas were safely
packed away in the hotel, and she wore a leather belt and loose
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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 King James Bible: JER 52:5 So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king
Zedekiah.
JER 52:6 And in the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the
famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people
of the land.
JER 52:7 Then the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled, and
went forth out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the
two walls, which was by the king's garden; (now the Chaldeans were by
the city round about:) and they went by the way of the plain.
JER 52:8 But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and
overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was
King James Bible |
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 Gambara by Honore de Balzac: sphere of metaphysics, with the ease of a somnambulist walking over
the roofs.
Gambara, keenly interested in all this transcendentalism, had not lost
a word; he took up his parable as soon as Andrea seemed to have ended,
and a little stir of revived attention was evident among the guests,
of whom several had been about to leave.
"You attack the Italian school with much vigor," said Gambara,
somewhat warmed to his work by the champagne, "and, for my part, you
are very welcome. I, thank God, stand outside this more or less
melodic frippery. Still, as a man of the world, you are too ungrateful
to the classic land whence Germany and France derived their first
Gambara |
