| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: luxurious chairs in reach of many books, but looking out on hills
where the game herds feed, of comfortable beds with fine linen
and soft blankets where one lies listening to the voices of an
African night, or the weirder minor house noises whose origin and
nature no man could guess, of tennis courts and summer houses, of
lawns and hammocks, of sundials and clipped hedges separated only
by a few strands of woven wire from fields identical with those
in which roamed the cave men of the Pleistocene. But to Billy was
reserved the most ridiculous contrast of all. Her bedroom opened
to a veranda a few feet above a formal garden. This was a very
formal garden, with a sundial, gravelled walks, bordered flower
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Desert Gold by Zane Grey: and hurried back to the corral. Yaqui awaited him. The Indian
carried a coiled lasso and a short stout stick. Without a word
he led the way down the lane, turned up the river toward the
mountains. None of Belding's household saw their departure.
What had once been only a narrow mesquite-bordered trail was now
a well-trodden road. A deep irrigation ditch, full of flowing
muddy water, ran parallel with the road. Gale had been curious
about the operations of the Chases, but bitterness he could not
help had kept him from going out to see the work. He was not
surprised to find that the engineers who had contructed the ditches
and dam had anticipated him in every particular. The dammed-up
Desert Gold |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: and we repeatedly saw in both animals that, just as the trumpeting began,
the orbicular muscles, especially the lower ones, were distinctly contracted.
On a subsequent occasion the keeper made the old elephant trumpet
much more loudly, and invariably both the upper and lower orbicular
muscles were strongly contracted, and now in an equal degree.
It is a singular fact that the African elephant, which, however, is so
different from the Indian species that it is placed by some naturalists
in a distinct sub-genus, when made on two occasions to trumpet loudly,
exhibited no trace of the contraction of the orbicular muscles.
[20] `Ceylon,' 3rd edit. 1859, vol. ii. pp. 364, 376.
I applied to Mr. Thwaites, in Ceylon, for further information
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
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 Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: consult some celebrated doctor in Paris."--"How can she be happy
without a child? They say she loves her husband; then why not give him
an heir?--in his position, too!"--"Do you know, it is really dreadful!
If it is the result of mere caprice, it is unpardonable. Poor
president!"
Endowed with the delicate perception which a solitary soul acquires
through constant meditation, through the exquisite clear-sightedness
with which a mind aloof from life fastens on all that falls within its
sphere, Eugenie, taught by suffering and by her later education to
divine thought, knew well that the president desired her death that he
might step into possession of their immense fortune, augmented by the
Eugenie Grandet |
