| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: was kissed by you. But now! Never in daylight."
I sat there stupid with surprise and grief. This was no longer the
adventure of venturesome children in a nursery-book. A grown man's
bitterness, informed, suspicious, resembling hatred, welled out of
my heart.
"All this means that you are going to desert me again?" I said with
contempt. "All right. I won't throw stones after you . . . Are
you going, then?"
She lowered her head slowly with a backward gesture of her arm as
if to keep me off, for I had sprung to my feet all at once as if
mad.
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: were busy, and Lily, who was a kind little soul and,
moreover, imaginative, and who liked the idea of
pushing an empty baby-carriage, had volunteered
to go for it. All the way she had been dreaming of
what was not in the carriage. She had come directly
out of a dream of doll twins when she chanced upon
the tragedy in the road.
"What have you been doing now, Johnny Trum-
bull?" said she. She was tremulous, white with
horror, but she stood her ground. It was curious,
but Johnny Trumbull, with all his bravery, was
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: these. For cannot a lover, with the voice of a great longing,
call forth a wholly new creature? a creature athrob with the life
but just begun breaks forth for him alone, from the outward form
that is fair for him, and faded for all the world besides. Does
he not love two women?--One of them, as others see her, is pale
and wan and sad; but the other, the unseen love that his heart
knows, is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is
adorned in all her glory only for love's high festivals.
The General left his post before sunrise, but not before he had
heard voices singing together, sweet voices full of tenderness
sounding faintly from the cell. When he came down to the foot of
|
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 End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: have been in character with what he knew of the man.
"It is my opinion, too," the lawyer agreed. The gen-
eral theory was that the captain had remained too long
on board trying to save something of importance. Per-
haps the chart which would clear him, or else something
of value in his cabin. The painter of the boat had
come adrift of itself it was supposed. However, strange
to say, some little time before that voyage poor Whalley
had called in his office and had left with him a sealed
envelope addressed to his daughter, to be forwarded to
her in case of his death. Still it was nothing very un-
End of the Tether |
