| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: began an explanation, because she did not choose to lose the slightest
sparkle of her own mind. From the earliest days of their marriage
Celestine, feeling herself beloved and admired by her husband, treated
him without ceremony; she put herself above conjugal laws and the
rules of private courtesy by expecting love to pardon all her little
wrong-doings; and, as she never in any way corrected herself, she was
always in the ascendant. In such a situation the man holds to the wife
very much the position of a child to a teacher when the latter cannot
or will not recognize that the mind he has ruled in childhood is
becoming mature. Like Madame de Stael, who exclaimed in a room full of
people, addressing, as we may say, a greater man than herself, "Do you
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: other proportion in looking at the sky, or the clock, or
trying to recall an air, or in meditation on his own past
adventures, and only the remainder in downright work such as
he is paid to do, is he, because the theft is one of time and
not of money, - is he any the less a thief? The one gave a
bad shilling, the other an imperfect hour; but both broke the
bargain, and each is a thief. In piecework, which is what
most of us do, the case is none the less plain for being even
less material. If you forge a bad knife, you have wasted
some of mankind's iron, and then, with unrivalled cynicism,
you pocket some of mankind's money for your trouble. Is
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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 Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: Buck's eyebrows came up slightly.
"Emma McChesney, you haven't developed--er--claws, have you?"
With a gasp, Emma McChesney plunged into the papers before her.
For ten minutes, the silence of the room was unbroken except for
the crackling of papers. Then Emma McChesney put down the first
sheaf and looked up at her business partner.
"Is that a fair sample?" she demanded.
"Very," answered T. A. Buck, and handed her another set.
Another ten minutes of silence. Emma McChesney reached out a
hand for still another set of papers. The pink of repressed
excitement was tinting her cheeks.
Emma McChesney & Co. |
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 Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum: I've sagged down dreadfully from walking so much
and men like to see a stately figure."
She then fell upon the ground and the boy rolled
her back and forth like a rolling-pin, until the
cotton had filled all the spaces in her patchwork
covering and the body had lengthened to its
fullest extent. Scraps and the Scarecrow both
finished their hasty toilets at the same time, and
again they faced each other.
"Allow me, Miss Patchwork," said the Shaggy Man,
"to present my friend, the Right Royal Scarecrow
The Patchwork Girl of Oz |
