| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: ROSALIND: I like business men. Clever men are usually so homely.
AMORY: I feel as if I'd known you for ages.
ROSALIND: Oh, are you going to commence the "pyramid" story?
AMORY: NoI was going to make it French. I was Louis XIV and you
were one of mymy (Changing his tone.) Supposewe fell in love.
ROSALIND: I ve suggested pretending.
AMORY: If we did it would be very big.
ROSALIND: Why?
AMORY: Because selfish people are in a way terribly capable of
great loves.
ROSALIND: (Turning her lips up) Pretend.
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: were armed.
"Bridle in mouth!" said D'Artagnan.
Porthos understood him and he and the lieutenant each drew
with the left hand a pistol from their bolsters and cocked
it in their turn.
"Who goes there?" was asked a second time. "Not a step
forward, or you're dead men."
"Stuff!" cried Porthos, almost choked with dust and chewing
his bridle as a horse chews his bit. "Stuff and nonsense; we
have seen plenty of dead men in our time."
Hearing these words, the two shadows blockaded the road and
Twenty Years After |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: Charles Cotton and Thomas Barker seem to have gone out of style
among the trout. Perhaps familiarity has bred contempt. Generation
after generation of fish have seen these same old feathered
confections floating on the water, and learned by sharp experience
that they do not taste good. The blase trout demand something new,
something modern. It is for this reason, I suppose, that an
altogether original fly, unheard of, startling, will often do great
execution in an over-fished pool.
Certain it is that the art of angling, in settled regions, is
growing more dainty and difficult. You must cast a longer, lighter
line; you must use finer leaders; you must have your flies dressed
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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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: And yet another point may well excite our admiration for Lycurgus
largely. It had not escaped his observation that communities exist
where those who are willing to make virtue their study and delight
fail somehow in ability to add to the glory of their fatherland.[4]
That lesson the legislator laid to heart, and in Sparta he enforced,
as a matter of public duty, the practice of virtue by every citizen.
And so it is that, just as man differs from man in some excellence,
according as he cultivates or neglects to cultivate it, this city of
Sparta, with good reason, outshines all other states in virtue; since
she, and she alone, as made the attainment of a high standard of noble
living a public duty.
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