| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: in English. She bustled about on every committee of the
Thanatopsis; she was always popping into the rest-room to
make Mrs. Nodelquist sweep the floor; she was appointed to
the library-board to succeed Carol; she taught the Senior
Girls' Class in the Episcopal Sunday School, and tried to revive
the King's Daughters. She exploded into self-confidence and
happiness; her draining thoughts were by marriage turned
into energy. She became daily and visibly more plump, and
though she chattered as eagerly, she was less obviously admiring
of marital bliss, less sentimental about babies, sharper in
demanding that the entire town share her reforms--the purchase
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: Kultur and Things
The Spirit of Christmas
Poor Dear Mamma and Fothergil Finch
Prison Reform and Poise
An Example of Psychic Power
Some Beautiful Thoughts
The Bourgeois Element and Background
Taking Up the Liquor Problem
The Japanese are Wonderful, If You Get What I Mean
She Refuses to Give UP the Cosmos
The Cave Man
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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 The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: And no more mov'd: where this man calls me Traitor,
Let me say thus much: if in love be Treason,
In service of so excellent a Beutie,
As I love most, and in that faith will perish,
As I have brought my life here to confirme it,
As I have serv'd her truest, worthiest,
As I dare kill this Cosen, that denies it,
So let me be most Traitor, and ye please me.
For scorning thy Edict, Duke, aske that Lady
Why she is faire, and why her eyes command me
Stay here to love her; and if she say 'Traytor,'
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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 La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: misfortune; sometimes the peace of the graveyard without the dead, who
speak in the language of epitaphs; one day I saw in it the home of
lepers; another, the house of the Atridae; but, above all, I found
there provincial life, with its contemplative ideas, its hour-glass
existence. I often wept there, I never laughed.
"More than once I felt involuntary terrors as I heard overhead the
dull hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-pigeon. The earth is dank;
you must be on the watch for lizards, vipers, and frogs, wandering
about with the wild freedom of nature; above all, you must have no
fear of cold, for in a few moments you feel an icy cloak settle on
your shoulders, like the Commendatore's hand on Don Giovanni's neck.
La Grande Breteche |
