| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made my self a motley to the view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new;
Most true it is, that I have look'd on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays prov'd thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,
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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 Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: support the flag. His friend, jubilant and glori-
fied, holding his treasure with vanity, came to
him there. They sat side by side and congratu-
lated each other.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE roarings that had stretched in a long line
of sound across the face of the forest began to
grow intermittent and weaker. The stentorian
speeches of the artillery continued in some dis-
tant encounter, but the crashes of the musketry
had almost ceased. The youth and his friend of
The Red Badge of Courage |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the
more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence.
- I don't believe one word of what you are saying, - spoke up the
angular female in black bombazine.
I am sorry you disbelieve it, Madam, - I said, and added softly to
my next neighbor, - but you prove it.
The young fellow sitting near me winked; and the divinity-student
said, in an undertone, - OPTIME DICTUM.
Your talking Latin, - said I, - reminds me of an odd trick of one
of my old tutors. He read so much of that language, that his
English half turned into it. He got caught in town, one hot
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
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 Under the Andes by Rex Stout: and landed squarely on the raft, which proceeded to perform its
favorite dive. It would have done so with much less persuasion,
for the fish was a monster--it appeared to me at that moment to be
twenty feet long.
On the instant, as the raft capsized, Harry and I lunged with
our spears, tumbling forward and landing on each other and on top
of the fish. I felt my spear sinking into the soft fish almost
without resistance.
The raft slipped from under, and we found ourselves
floundering in the water.
I have said the spear-thongs were fastened about our waists.
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