| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: long ago; he could hardly believe that they had ever been happy,
or engaged to be married, for what were feelings, what was there
to be felt? Confusion covered every sight and person, and he
seemed to see St. John, Ridley, and the stray people who came up
now and then from the hotel to enquire, through a mist; the only
people who were not hidden in this mist were Helen and Rodriguez,
because they could tell him something definite about Rachel.
Nevertheless the day followed the usual forms. At certain hours
they went into the dining-room, and when they sat round the table
they talked about indifferent things. St. John usually made it
his business to start the talk and to keep it from dying out.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: noticing a handkerchief that Cassandra had dropped in her flight.
"Cassandra was helping me to put the flowers in water," said
Katharine, and she spoke so firmly and clearly that Mrs. Milvain
glanced nervously at the main door and then at the curtain which
divided the little room with the relics from the drawing-room.
"Ah, Cassandra is still with you," she remarked. "And did William send
you those lovely flowers?"
Katharine sat down opposite her aunt and said neither yes nor no. She
looked past her, and it might have been thought that she was
considering very critically the pattern of the curtains. Another
advantage of the basement, from Mrs. Milvain's point of view, was that
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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 Voice of the City by O. Henry: the burglar-proof safe of the Farmers' National Bank
of Butterville, Ia., flew open some moonless nights
ago to the tune of $16,000."
"Aren't you afraid," asked Vuyning, "that I'll
call a cop and hand you over?"
"You tell me," said Emerson, coolly, "why I
didn't keep them."
He laid Vuyning's pocketbook and watch -- the
Vuyning 100-year-old family watch on the table.
"Man," said Vuyning, revelling, "did you ever
hear the tale Kirk tells about the six-pound trout
The Voice of the City |
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 Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: "You are right, Prince," said de Marsay. "The 'perfect lady,' issuing
from the ranks of the nobility, or sprouting from the citizen class,
and the product of every soil, even of the provinces is the expression
of these times, a last remaining embodiment of good taste, grace, wit,
and distinction, all combined, but dwarfed. We shall see no more great
ladies in France, but there will be 'ladies' for a long time, elected
by public opinion to form an upper chamber of women, and who will be
among the fair sex what a 'gentleman' is in England."
"And that they call progress!" exclaimed Mademoiselle des Touches. "I
should like to know where the progress lies?"
"Why, in this," said Madame de Nucingen. "Formerly a woman might have
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