| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "My wedded existence a curse long has been,
And these are the fruits from that flower!
'Tis ever denied, and the saying is true,
That to wed with the base-born is right;
The beggar has borne me a beggarly crew,--"
The children they hear with affright.
"If the husband, the father, thus treats you with scorn,
If the holiest bonds by him rashly are torn,
Then come to your father--to me!
The beggar may gladden life's pathway forlorn,
Though aged and weak he may be.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: wrinkles from the counterpane. Louise lay under a field of
virgin white, folded back at an angle of geometrical exactness,
and necessitating a readjustment every time the sick girl turned.
Liddy heard my approach and came out to meet me. She seemed to
be in a perpetual state of goose-flesh, and she had got in the
habit of looking past me when she talked, as if she saw things.
It had the effect of making me look over my shoulder to see what
she was staring at, and was intensely irritating.
"She's awake," Liddy said, looking uneasily down the circular
staircase, which was beside me. "She was talkin' in her sleep
something awful--about dead men and coffins."
The Circular Staircase |
