| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Mrs. Tate sat uneasily, her hands folded in her lap.
"How long has Lucien been here?" Mr. Jamieson asked.
"Since a week ago last Friday. His mother paid one week's board
in advance; the other has not been paid."
"Was he ill when he came?"
"No, sir, not what you'd call sick. He was getting better of
typhoid, she said, and he's picking up fine."
"Will you tell me his mother's name and address?"
"That's the trouble," the young woman said, knitting her brows.
"She gave her name as Mrs. Wallace, and said she had no address.
She was looking for a boarding-house in town. She said she
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: passage of the monster rock. Our task thus became much easier, and
our progress was in a straight line upward, so that toward half past
eleven we reached the upper border of the "slide."
Before us, less than a hundred feet away, but towering a hundred feet
straight upwards in the air rose the rocky wall which formed the
final crest, the last defence of the Great Eyrie.
From this side, the summit of the wall showed capriciously irregular,
rising in rude towers and jagged needles. At one point the outline
appeared to be an enormous eagle silhouetted against the sky, just
ready to take flight. Upon this side, at least, the precipice was
insurmountable.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]: two homes where those three dear children lived. Patrick the coachman and
Philip the groom had been sent with the wagonette by the main road to Patrick
Kirk's--Patrick to bring the children and Philip to take charge of Barney, but
as the children were coming home, or rather trying to come home, by the ford,
of course they missed them.
All the while the storm was growing in violence, and suddenly for about five
minutes great hailstones came beating down till the lawn was fairly white with
them, and the panes of glass in the green-house roof at Oakdene cracked and
broke beneath them. "And those three blessed children are probably out in it
all," thought Tattine's Mother, standing pale and trembling at her window, and
watching the road which the wagonette would have to come. And then what did
|
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 Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: This is as I had reckoned.
"I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends."
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.
"For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
Prufrock/Other Observations |
