| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: above you just now and marked you for his victim.
You are not blind or deaf."
"I recognized no such person," said Kerner. "I
have seen no one but you at this table. Sit down.
Hereafter you shall have no more absinthe drips."
"Wait here," said I, furious; "if you don't care
for your own life, I will save it for you."
I hurried out and overtook the man in gray half-
way down the block. He looked as I bad seen him in
my fancy a thousand times - truculent, gray and
awful. He walked with the white oak staff, and but
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: Gazette" reported it. Within a few minutes of opening her door, she
was in trim for a hard evening's work. She unlocked a drawer and took
out a manuscript, which consisted of a very few pages, entitled, in a
forcible hand, "Some Aspects of the Democratic State." The aspects
dwindled out in a cries-cross of blotted lines in the very middle of a
sentence, and suggested that the author had been interrupted, or
convinced of the futility of proceeding, with her pen in the
air. . . . Oh, yes, Ralph had come in at that point. She scored that
sheet very effectively, and, choosing a fresh one, began at a great
rate with a generalization upon the structure of human society, which
was a good deal bolder than her custom. Ralph had told her once that
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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 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: to Jan Smirka, and I'm terribly afraid he won't
take me to the dance in the evening. Maybe
the supper will tempt him. All Angelique's
folks are baking for it, and all Amedee's twenty
cousins. There will be barrels of beer. If once
I get Frank to the supper, I'll see that I stay
for the dance. And by the way, Emil, you
mustn't dance with me but once or twice. You
must dance with all the French girls. It hurts
their feelings if you don't. They think you're
proud because you've been away to school or
O Pioneers! |
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 Astoria by Washington Irving: natives been attended to. Had this ship performed her voyage
prosperously, and revisited Astoria in due time, the trade of the
establishment would have taken its preconcerted course, and the
spirits of all concerned been kept up by a confident prospect of
success. Her dismal catastrophe struck a chill into every heart,
and prepared the way for subsequent despondency.
Another cause of embarrassment and loss was the departure from
the plan of Mr. Astor, as to the voyage of the Beaver, subsequent
to her visiting Astoria. The variation from this plan produced a
series of cross purposes, disastrous to the establishment, and
detained Mr. Hunt absent from his post, when his presence there
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