| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: Mrs. Cutter; it would be useless to interrogate the girl, for she knew nothing
of what had happened.
Then Mrs. Cutter told her story. She and her husband had started home from
Omaha together the morning before. They had to stop over several hours at
Waymore Junction to catch the Black Hawk train. During the wait, Cutter left
her at the depot and went to the Waymore bank to attend to some business.
When he returned, he told her that he would have to stay overnight there,
but she could go on home. He bought her ticket and put her on the train.
She saw him slip a twenty-dollar bill into her handbag with her ticket.
That bill, she said, should have aroused her suspicions at once--but did not.
The trains are never called at little junction towns;
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: was nourished and gained strength in hot weather, and was, as it were,
propagated in heat.
Others said they granted that heat in the climate might propagate
infection - as sultry, hot weather fills the air with vermin and
nourishes innumerable numbers and kinds of venomous creatures
which breed in our food, in the plants, and even in our bodies, by the
very stench of which infection may be propagated; also that heat in
the air, or heat of weather, as we ordinarily call it, makes bodies relax
and faint, exhausts the spirits, opens the pores, and makes us more apt
to receive infection, or any evil influence, be it from noxious
pestilential vapours or any other thing in the air; but that the heat of
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: crawling upon her hands and knees straight toward the hole from
which the two eyes still clung to hers. At the very threshold of
the opening she made a last, heroic stand, battling against the
force that drew her on; but in the end she succumbed. With a gasp
that ended in a sob Tara of Helium passed through the aperture
into the chamber beyond.
The opening was but barely large enough to admit her. Upon the
opposite side she found herself in a small chamber. Before her
squatted Luud. Against the opposite wall lay a large and
beautiful male rykor. He was without harness or other trappings.
"You see now," said Luud, "the futility of revolt."
The Chessmen of Mars |
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 Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: Brittany--what was the matter with her? All these questions passed and
repassed through his heart and rent it, revealing to his own soul the
extent of his love for his little adopted sister.
It is extremely rare to find a passion existing between two children
of opposite sexes. The charming story of Paul and Virginia does not,
any more than this of Pierrette and Brigaut, answer the question put
by that strange moral fact. Modern history offers only the illustrious
instance of the Marchesa di Pescara and her husband. Destined to marry
by their parents from their earliest years, they adored each other and
were married, and their union gave to the sixteenth century the noble
spectacle of a perfect conjugal love without a flaw. When the marchesa
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