| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: me sick."
"But, Mr. Annixter, we couldn't have begun painting in the rain.
The job would have been spoiled."
"Hoh, yes, spoiled. That's all very well. Maybe it would, and
then, again, maybe it wouldn't."
But when the foreman had left him, Annixter could not forbear a
growl of satisfaction. It could not be denied that the barn was
superb, monumental even. Almost any one of the other barns in
the county could be swung, bird-cage fashion, inside of it, with
room to spare. In every sense, the barn was precisely what
Annixter had hoped of it. In his pleasure over the success of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: That is evident, he said.
But then what profit, Critias, I said, is there any longer in wisdom or
temperance which yet remains, if this is wisdom? If, indeed, as we were
supposing at first, the wise man had been able to distinguish what he knew
and did not know, and that he knew the one and did not know the other, and
to recognize a similar faculty of discernment in others, there would
certainly have been a great advantage in being wise; for then we should
never have made a mistake, but have passed through life the unerring guides
of ourselves and of those who are under us; and we should not have
attempted to do what we did not know, but we should have found out those
who knew, and have handed the business over to them and trusted in them;
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: candlestick maker; high old times are coming for
Colebrook, they are coming, to be sure. It used to
be 'next week,' now it has come to 'next month,'
and so on--soon it will be next spring, for all I
know."
Noticing a stranger listening to him with a va-
cant grin, he explained, stretching out his legs cyn-
ically, that this queer old Hagberd, a retired coast-
ing-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of
his. The boy had been driven away from home, he
shouldn't wonder; had run away to sea and had
To-morrow |
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 Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: his well-made evening clothes, who spoke Harmony's own language
of music, who was almost speechless over her playing, and who
looked up at her with eyes in which admiration was not unmixed
with adoration.
Peter was restless. As the music went on he tiptoed out of the
room and took to pacing up and down the little corridor. Each
time as he passed the door he tried not to glance in; each time
he paused involuntarily. Jealousy had her will of him that night,
jealousy, when he had never acknowledged even to himself how much
the girl was to him.
Jimmy was restless. Usually Harmony's music put him to sleep; but
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