| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: CHAPTER XXV--THE HEAD-HUNTERS
The morning's action had been settled the night before. Tudor was
to stay behind in his banyan refuge and gather strength while the
expedition proceeded. On the far chance that they might rescue
even one solitary survivor of Tudor's party, Joan was fixed in her
determination to push on; and neither Sheldon nor Tudor could
persuade her to remain quietly at the banyan tree while Sheldon
went on and searched. With Tudor, Adamu Adam and Arahu were to
stop as guards, the latter Tahitian being selected to remain
because of a bad foot which had been brought about by stepping on
one of the thorns concealed by the bushmen. It was evidently a
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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 Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: duly clad in a prison costume, duly set to work upon a
stone-pile, duly locked up over night in a steel-barred cell full
of vermin--in a building housing some five hundred wretches,
black and white, thirty of them serving life-terms under
circumstances which never permitted them a breath of fresh air
nor a glimpse of the sunshine or the sky. They had no exercise
court to their prison, and the inmates were not permitted to
speak to one another, but ate their meals in dead silence, and
walked back to their cells with folded arms, and had their only
occupation working for a sweat-shop contractor; this on the
outskirts of the capital city of Wilmington, with no less than
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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 Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: there is some one else by the sickbed, a portress, who would push him
into the grave for thirty thousand francs. Not that she would kill him
outright; she will not give him arsenic, she is not so merciful; she
will do worse, she will kill him by inches; she will worry him to
death day by day. If the poor old man were kept quiet and left in
peace; if he were taken into the country and cared for and made much
of by friends, he would get well again; but he is harassed by a sort
of Mme. Evrard. When the woman was young she was one of thirty /Belles
Ecailleres/, famous in Paris, she is a rough, greedy, gossiping woman;
she torments him to make a will and to leave her something handsome,
and the end of it will be induration of the liver, calculi are
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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 My Antonia by Willa Cather: breasts a-quiver. The wind blew about us in warm, sweet gusts.
We rode slowly, with a pleasant sense of Sunday indolence.
We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a week-day. Marek was
cleaning out the stable, and Antonia and her mother were making garden,
off across the pond in the draw-head. Ambrosch was up on the windmill tower,
oiling the wheel. He came down, not very cordially. When Jake asked
for the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collar belonged
to grandfather, of course, and Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up.
`Now, don't you say you haven't got it, Ambrosch, because I know you have,
and if you ain't a-going to look for it, I will.'
Ambrosch shrugged his shoulders and sauntered down the hill toward
My Antonia |
