| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: the bookkeeper's office. "This is our insurance agent.
. . ."
Then he dreamed that Lesnitsky and Loshadin the constable were
walking through the open country in the snow, side by side,
supporting each other; the snow was whirling about their heads,
the wind was blowing on their backs, but they walked on,
singing: We go on, and on, and on. . . ."
The old man was like a magician in an opera, and both of them
were singing as though they were on the stage:
"We go on, and on, and on! . . . You are in the warmth, in the
light and snugness, but we are walking in the frost and the
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: the fire.
Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. She
announced that "a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with
the master," when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence
followed. He looked at the porter--the porter went; he looked at
Jenny--and Jenny went likewise.
"Madame," said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, "with your permission, we
will conclude a piece of urgent business."
He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went
into the drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth's
eyes lit up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had
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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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: connected with the sexual reproduction of the race; and, it is exactly in
these fields of human activity, where sex as sex is concerned, that woman
as woman has a part to play which she cannot resign into the hands of
others.
It may be truly said that in the laboratory, the designing-room, the
factory, the mart, the mathematician's study, and in all fields of purely
abstract or impersonal labour, while the entrance of woman would add to the
net result of human labour in those fields, and though a grave injustice is
done to the individual woman excluded from perhaps the only field she is
fitted to excel in, that yet woman as woman has probably little or nothing
to contribute in those fields that is radically distinct from that which
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: life."
So we started. Millions were coming to the cloud-bank all the
time, happy and hosannahing; millions were leaving it all the time,
looking mighty quiet, I tell you. We laid for the new-comers, and
pretty soon I'd got them to hold all my things a minute, and then I
was a free man again and most outrageously happy. Just then I ran
across old Sam Bartlett, who had been dead a long time, and stopped
to have a talk with him. Says I -
"Now tell me - is this to go on forever? Ain't there anything else
for a change?"
Says he -
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