| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no
one else was interested--interested, I mean, with that intense personal
interest to which every one has some vague right at the end.
I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her
instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away
early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.
"Left no address?"
"No."
"Say when they'd be back?"
"No."
"Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?"
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: believe to be there in the flesh the man who was once
her lover. Her eyes were bright, her pale cheek still
showed its wonted roundness, though half-dried tears
had left glistening traces thereon; and the usually
ripe red mouth was almost as pale as her cheek.
Throbbingly alive as she was still, under the stress of
her mental grief the life beat so brokenly, that a
little further pull upon it would cause real illness,
dull her characteristic eyes, and make her mouth thin.
She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic
trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: her mercy. Her mercy! What exquisite irony! Her mercy! The man
her heart loved; the thief her common sense abhorred! What irony!
When she, too, played a double role; when in their other characters,
that of the Adventurer and the White Moll, he and she were linked
together by the gang as confederates, whereas, in truth, they were
wider apart than the poles of the earth!
Her mercy! How merciful would she be - to the thief she loved? He
knew, he must know, all the inner secrets of the gang. She smiled
wanly now as she reached the landing. Would he know that in the
last analysis her threat would be only an idle one; that, though her
future, her safety, her life depended on obtaining the evidence she
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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 Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: a year ago, and Martin, like the rest of the community, had
supposed the Fallon Independent would be sold or suspended.
Instead, as quietly and matter-of-factly as she had filled her
dead mother's place in the home while her brothers and sisters
were growing up, Rose stepped into her father's business, took
over the editorship and with a boy to do the typesetting and
presswork, continued the paper without missing an issue. It even
paid a little better than before, partly because it flattered
Fallon's sense of Christian helpfulness to throw whatever it
could in Rose's way, but chiefly because she made the Independent
a livelier sheet with double the usual number of "Personals."
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