| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: Heights dinners were worth the hideous toil involved. But he repented the
sacrilege in the excitement of buying the materials for cocktails.
Now this was the manner of obtaining alcohol under the reign of righteousness
and prohibition:
He drove from the severe rectangular streets of the modern business center
into the tangled byways of Old Town--jagged blocks filled with sooty
warehouses and lofts; on into The Arbor, once a pleasant orchard but now a
morass of lodging-houses, tenements, and brothels. Exquisite shivers chilled
his spine and stomach, and he looked at every policeman with intense
innocence, as one who loved the law, and admired the Force, and longed to stop
and play with them. He parked his car a block from Healey Hanson's saloon,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: glared like the eyes of a wild cat. He started back with savage
energy and a fierce growl that drew exclamations of alarm from
the lodgers. At that leonine start the police caught at their
pistols under cover of the general clamor. Collin saw the
gleaming muzzles of the weapons, saw his danger, and instantly
gave proof of a power of the highest order. There was something
horrible and majestic in the spectacle of the sudden
transformation in his face; he could only be compared to a
cauldron full of the steam that can send mountains flying, a
terrific force dispelled in a moment by a drop of cold water. The
drop of water that cooled his wrathful fury was a reflection that
Father Goriot |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: Tho fell this knyht in mochel thoght,
Now goth he forth, now comth ayein,
He wot noght what is best to sein, 1570
And thoghte, as he rod to and fro,
That chese he mot on of the tuo,
Or forto take hire to his wif
Or elles forto lese his lif.
And thanne he caste his avantage,
That sche was of so gret an age,
That sche mai live bot a while,
And thoghte put hire in an Ile,
Confessio Amantis |
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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: set apart for the gente fina.
Such another library was not then in California; and though Gaston
Villere, in leaving Harvard College, had shut Horace and Sophocles for
ever at the earliest instant possible under academic requirements, he
knew the Greek and Latin names that he now saw as well as he knew those
of Shakspere, Dante, Moliere, and Cervantes. These were here also; but it
could not be precisely said of them, either, that they made a part of the
young man's daily reading. As he surveyed the Padre's august shelves, it
was with a touch of the histrionic Southern gravity which his Northern
education had not wholly schooled out of him that he said:
"I fear I am no scholar, sir. But I know what writers every gentleman
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