| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Finding excuse of no avail,
Yielded; and thus the story ran.
THE LANDLORD'S TALE.
PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had
come home to him. I even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this
wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of mind was
impossible. However great their intellectual degradation, the
Eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim my
sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation
and their Fear.
`I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should
pursue. My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to
make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive.
That necessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to
The Time Machine |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: of starting a blouse in an emergency on Saturday night and
finishing it in time for a Sunday picnic, buttonholes and all.
Their help might have been invaluable. It never was asked.
Without warning, Chuck came home on three days' furlough. It
meant that he was bound for France right enough this time. But
Tessie didn't care.
"I don't care where you're goin'," she said exultantly, her
eyes lingering on the stocky, straight, powerful figure in its
rather ill-fitting khaki. "You're here now. That's enough.
Ain't you tickled to be home, Chuck? Gee!" `
`I'll say," responded Chuck. But even he seemed to detect some
One Basket |
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 The Call of the Canyon by Zane Grey: "By George! Carley, sometimes I think you've changed since you've been
here," he said, with warmth. "To go through that sandstorm without one
kick--one knock at my West!"
"Glenn, I always think of what Flo says--the worst is yet to come," replied
Carley, trying to hide her unreasonable and tumultuous pleasure at words of
praise from him.
"Carley Burch, you don't know yourself," he declared, enigmatically.
"What woman knows herself? But do you know me?"
"Not I. Yet sometimes I see depths in you--wonderful possibilities-
-submerged under your poise--under your fixed, complacent idle attitude
toward life."
The Call of the Canyon |
