| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: Now everything was plastered with mortgages.
Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel strained himself lifting timbers
for a new barn, and fell over among the shavings with such a gush of blood
from the lungs that his fellow workmen thought he would die on the spot.
They hauled him home and put him into his bed, and there he lay,
very ill indeed. Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof
of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warning human beings away.
The Russians had such bad luck that people were afraid of them and liked
to put them out of mind.
One afternoon Antonia and her father came over to our house to
get buttermilk, and lingered, as they usually did, until the sun
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: C. de C."
As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight
to Paris and to Poitiers. The journey took him far southward,
through green Touraine and across the far-shining Loire, into a
country where the early spring deepened about him as he went.
But he had never made a journey during which he heeded
less what he would have called the lay of the land.
He obtained lodging at the inn at Poitiers, and the next morning
drove in a couple of hours to the village of Fleurieres.
But here, preoccupied though he was, he could not fail to notice
the picturesqueness of the place. It was what the French call
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: receive from South America," cut into thongs, and netted close. It
should be loosely laced together with a thong at the tail edge in
order to be opened easily, when brought on board, without canting
the net over, and pouring the contents roughly out through the
mouth. The dragging-rope should be strong, and at least three
times as long as the perpendicular depth of the water in which you
are working; if, indeed, there is much breeze, or any swell at all,
still more line should be veered out. The inboard end should be
made fast somewhere in the stern sheets, the dredge hove to
windward, the boat put before the wind; and you may then amuse
yourself as you will for the next quarter of an hour, provided that
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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 Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide:
Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back. 300
Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares;
Anon he starts at stirring of a feather;
To bid the wind a base he now prepares,
And whe'r he run or fly they know not whether; 304
For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,
Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather'd wings.
He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her;
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