| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: into one of the sluits. He walked down the bed of the sluit a little way
and came to an overhanging bank, under which, sitting on the red sand, were
two men. One was a tiny, ragged, old bushman, four feet high; the other
was an English navvy, in a dark blue blouse. They cut the kid's throat
with the navvy's long knife, and covered up the blood with sand, and buried
the entrails and skin. Then they talked, and quarrelled a little; and then
they talked quietly again.
The Hottentot man put a leg of the kid under his coat and left the rest of
the meat for the two in the sluit, and walked away.
When little Jannita awoke it was almost sunset. She sat up very
frightened, but her goats were all about her. She began to drive them
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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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: laid up. Burn this as soon as you've read it. Louis Bassett has
started for Norada, and I advise your getting the person we
discussed out of town as soon as possible. Bassett is up to
mischief. I'm not signing this fully, for obvious reasons. G."
XVII
The Sayre house stood on the hill behind the town, a long, rather
low white house on Italian lines. In summer, until the family
exodus to the Maine Coast, the brilliant canopy which extended out
over the terrace indicated, as Harrison Miller put it, that the
family was "in residence." Originally designed as a summer home,
Mrs. Sayre now used it the year round. There was nothing there,
The Breaking Point |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo: "Did you think of me every minute?" she asked jealously.
"That would be telling," laughed Alfred, as he pinched her small
pink ear.
"I wish to be 'told,' " declared Zoie; "I don't suppose you
realise it, but if I were to live a THOUSAND YEARS, I'd never be
quite sure what you did during those FEW MONTHS."
"It was nothing that you wouldn't have been proud of," answered
Alfred, with an unconscious expansion of his chest.
"Do you love me as much as ever?" asked Zoie.
"Behave yourself," answered Alfred, trying not to appear
flattered by the discovery that his absence had undoubtedly
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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 Euthydemus by Plato: the rest. They fancied that Ctesippus was making game of them, and they
refused, and they would only say in answer to each of his questions, that
they knew all things. For at last Ctesippus began to throw off all
restraint; no question in fact was too bad for him; he would ask them if
they knew the foulest things, and they, like wild boars, came rushing on
his blows, and fearlessly replied that they did. At last, Crito, I too was
carried away by my incredulity, and asked Euthydemus whether Dionysodorus
could dance.
Certainly, he replied.
And can he vault among swords, and turn upon a wheel, at his age? has he
got to such a height of skill as that?
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