| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: care for money, and in whom the lust for power had long since
died. As for the friendship of the city-dwellers, his host spoke
in no uncertain terms.
"What did they do, all the chaps I knew, the chaps in the clubs
with whom I'd been cheek by jowl for heaven knows how long? I
was not beholden to them for anything, and when I slipped out
there was not one of them to drop me a line and say, 'How are
you, old man? Anything I can do for you?' For several weeks it
was: 'What's become of Ferguson?" After that I became a
reminiscence and a memory. Yet every last one of them knew I had
nothing but my salary and that I'd always lived a lap ahead of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: finds their gray hairs crowned with it,--the very men he has looked up
to, believed in, his ideals, his examples, the merchant prince, the
railroad magnate, the president of insurance companies--all dirty
rascals! Presently he faces worldly success or failure, and then, in the
new ocean of mind that has swallowed morals up, he sinks with his
isolated honesty, like a fool, or swims to respectability with his
brother knaves. And into this mess the immigrant sewage of Europe is
steadily pouring. Such is our continent to-day, with all its fair winds
and tides and fields favorable to us, and only our shallow, complacent,
dishonest selves against us! But don't let these considerations make you
gloomy; for (I must say it again) nothing is final; and even if we rot
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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 Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: A jiggling of the hook. "Number, please?" droned the voice
of the operator.
Fanny jammed the receiver down on the hook and turned to her
work, lips compressed, a frown forming a double cleft
between her eyes.
Half an hour later he was there. Her office boy brought in
his card, as she had rehearsed him to do. Fanny noted that
it was the wrong kind of card. She would show him what
happened to pushers who pestered business women during
office hours.
"Bring him in in twenty minutes," she said, grimly. Her
Fanny Herself |
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 Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: And pecks of Crowes, in the fowle feilds of Thebs.
He will not suffer us to burne their bones,
To urne their ashes, nor to take th' offence
Of mortall loathsomenes from the blest eye
Of holy Phoebus, but infects the windes
With stench of our slaine Lords. O pitty, Duke:
Thou purger of the earth, draw thy feard Sword
That does good turnes to'th world; give us the Bones
Of our dead Kings, that we may Chappell them;
And of thy boundles goodnes take some note
That for our crowned heades we have no roofe,
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