| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: at him with a sort of admiring awe. And the city editor
would glance up from beneath his green eye-shade and call
out:
"Say, Orme, for a man who has just wired in about a
million dollars' worth of stuff seems to me you don't
look very crisp and jaunty."
"Haven't slept for a week," Peter Orme would growl,
and then he would brush past the men who were crowded
around him, and turn in my direction. And the old
hot-and-cold, happy, frightened, laughing, sobbing
sensation would have me by the throat again.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: risk following.
He gave the sweets to the youngster, and had the satisfaction of
perceiving that confidence was established. After that it was easy to
obtain leadership of the expedition; to take the investment by the
hand and lead it to a nice drug store he knew of in the same block.
There Chicken, with a parental air, passed over the dollar and called
for the medicine, while the boy crunched his candy, glad to be
relieved of the responsibility of the purchase. And then the
successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat button--
the extent of his winter trousseau--and, wrapping it carefully, placed
the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding juvenility. Setting
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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 The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Far from life's story;
Train'd now himself, will he
Train us in glory.
THE PENITENT, once named Margaret.
Link'd with the noble band of spirits,
Scarce can the new one feel or see
The radiant life he now inherits,
So like that holy band is he.
See how he bursts each bond material,
And parts the olden veil at length,--
In vesture clad of grace ethereal,
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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 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far
from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that
employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those
of persons so qualified; and, at least, that the mistakes
committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be
of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the practices of
a man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had
great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his
corruptions.
In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a
man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings
Gulliver's Travels |
