| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: disregard for their legs and his convenience. He could not
conceive their maniacal desires to cross the streets. Their
madness smote him with eternal amazement. He was continually
storming at them from his throne. He sat aloft and denounced their
frantic leaps, plunges, dives and straddles.
When they would thrust at, or parry, the noses of his champing
horses, making them swing their heads and move their feet,
disturbing a solid dreamy repose, he swore at the men as fools,
for he himself could perceive that Providence had caused it clearly
to be written, that he and his team had the unalienable right to stand
in the proper path of the sun chariot, and if they so minded,
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: once he rose and made as if to go on deck. But we laid
him down again and he sank into movelessness and a sleep
of all the faculties. Juan de la Cosa took care of the _Cordera_.
So we sighted Isabella and in the harbor four caravels
that had not been there when we had sailed in April.
CHAPTER XXXII
TWO men came into the cabin, Don Diego Colon, left
in charge of Hispaniola, and with him a tall, powerful,
high-featured man, gray of eye and black and silver
of hair and short beard. As he stood beside the bed, one
saw that he must be kinsman to the man who lay upon it.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: upon the treeless capitol grounds. Perhaps he was thinking of the
rough and ready life he had led, of the old days of breathless
adventure and movement, of the comrades who now trod other paths or
had ceased to tread any, of the changes civilization and peace had
brought, and, maybe, complacently, of the snug and comfortable camp
pitched for him under the dome of the capitol of the state that had
not forgotten his services.
The business of the department was lax. Insurance was easy. Statistics
were not in demand. History was dead. Old Kauffman, the efficient and
perpetual clerk, had requested an infrequent half-holiday, incited to
the unusual dissipation by the joy of having successfully twisted the
|
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 Euthydemus by Plato: like children after larks, always on the point of catching the art, which
was always getting away from us. But why should I repeat the whole story?
At last we came to the kingly art, and enquired whether that gave and
caused happiness, and then we got into a labyrinth, and when we thought we
were at the end, came out again at the beginning, having still to seek as
much as ever.
CRITO: How did that happen, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I will tell you; the kingly art was identified by us with the
political.
CRITO: Well, and what came of that?
SOCRATES: To this royal or political art all the arts, including the art
|
