| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: four hundred carcasses every hour!
The Negroes and the "toughs" from the Levee did not want to work,
and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire
and recuperate. In a couple of days Durham and Company had
electric fans up to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches
for them to rest on; and meantime they could go out and find a
shady corner and take a "snooze," and as there was no place for
any one in particular, and no system, it might be hours before
their boss discovered them. As for the poor office employees,
they did their best, moved to it by terror; thirty of them had
been "fired" in a bunch that first morning for refusing to serve,
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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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: gentle, grateful, resigned; but this was only the form of a deep
immoveability. He saw he should never more cross the threshold of
the second room, and he felt how much this alone would make a
stranger of him and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He
would have hated to plunge again into that well of reminders, but
he enjoyed quite as little the vacant alternative.
After he had been with her three or four times it struck him that
to have come at last into her house had had the horrid effect of
diminishing their intimacy. He had known her better, had liked her
in greater freedom, when they merely walked together or kneeled
together. Now they only pretended; before they had been nobly
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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 Herland by Charlotte Gilman: and passed it on to those behind her.
He tried again, this time bringing out a circlet of rhinestones,
a glittering crown that should have pleased any woman on earth.
He made a brief address, including Jeff and me as partners in his
enterprise, and with another bow presented this. Again his gift
was accepted and, as before, passed out of sight.
"If they were only younger," he muttered between his teeth.
"What on earth is a fellow to say to a regiment of old Colonels
like this?"
In all our discussions and speculations we had always
unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be,
Herland |
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 The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: wasn't to be. He had a little flower-shop just down the road and across
from where we was living. Funny--wasn't it? And me such a one for
flowers. We were having a lot of company at the time, and I was in and out
of the shop more often than not, as the saying is. And Harry and I (his
name was Harry) got to quarrelling about how things ought to be arranged--
and that began it. Flowers! you wouldn't believe it, madam, the flowers he
used to bring me. He'd stop at nothing. It was lilies-of-the-valley more
than once, and I'm not exaggerating! Well, of course, we were going to be
married and live over the shop, and it was all going to be just so, and I
was to have the window to arrange...Oh, how I've done that window of a
Saturday! Not really, of course, madam, just dreaming, as you might say.
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