| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: He and the innocent chatterbox whom I met on the Swiss
lake are the most unique and interesting specimens of
Young America I came across during my foreign tramping.
I have made honest portraits of them, not caricatures.
The Grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five
or six times as an "old traveler,"and as many as three
times (with a serene complacency which was maddening)
as a "man of the world." There was something very delicious
about his leaving Boston to her "narrowness," unreproved
and uninstructed.
I formed the caravan in marching order, presently,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me
incapable of having ever felt. Her's, for me, was, I believe,
fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby
and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate.
At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was
married--married against her inclination to my brother.
Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered.
And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the
conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her.
I had hoped that her regard for me would support her
Sense and Sensibility |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: him. That subject had been once and for all banished from their
intercourse. And it was because of that very reason that their
companionship of the last three or four months had been so
charming. She looked upon him merely as a chum. She had not
changed in the least from that time until now, whereas he--why,
all his world was new for him that morning! Why, he loved her so,
she had become so dear to him, that the very thought of her made
his heart swell and leap.
But he must keep all this to himself. If he spoke to her, told
her of how he loved her, it would spoil and end their
|
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 Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: girl lying in the hot sun. Then he walked off, and caught one of the
fattest little Angora goats, and held its mouth fast, as he stuck it under
his arm. He looked back to see that she was still sleeping, and jumped down
into one of the sluits. He walked down the bed of the sluit a little way
and came to an overhanging bank, under which, sitting on the red sand, were
two men. One was a tiny, ragged, old bushman, four feet high; the other
was an English navvy, in a dark blue blouse. They cut the kid's throat
with the navvy's long knife, and covered up the blood with sand, and buried
the entrails and skin. Then they talked, and quarrelled a little; and then
they talked quietly again.
The Hottentot man put a leg of the kid under his coat and left the rest of
|
