| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: thankless days, withered before her time with the struggling
routine of medical practice, sapped with endless calls for
sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and became
physiological.
Life and birth and death had lost their mysteries. The veil was
rent.
To fit this existence of hers she had built herself a curious
creed, a philosophy of individualism, from behind which she flung
strange bombshells of theories, shafts of distorted moralities,
personal liberties, irresponsibilities, a supreme scorn for
modern law and the prophets. Nature, she claimed, was her law and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: hatred that it had, perhaps, borne during the fight. Her bare,
red arms were thrown out above her head in positions of exhaustion,
something, mayhap, like those of a sated villain.
The urchin bended over his mother. He was fearful lest she
should open her eyes, and the dread within him was so strong,
that he could not forbear to stare, but hung as if fascinated
over the woman's grim face.
Suddenly her eyes opened. The urchin found himself looking
straight into that expression, which, it would seem, had the power
to change his blood to salt. He howled piercingly and fell
backward.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: and sat on the edge of the thin little bed and stared at the car-
pet. It was a dusty red carpet. In front of the bureau many feet
had worn a hole, so that the bare boards showed through, with a
tuft of ragged red fringe edging them. Eddie Houghton sat and
stared at the worn place with a curiously blank look on his face.
He sat and stared and saw many things. He saw his mother, for one
thing, sitting on the porch with a gingham apron over her light
dress, waiting for him to come home to supper; he saw his own
room--a typical boy's room, with camera pictures and blue prints
stuck in the sides of the dresser mirror, and the boxing gloves on
the wall, and his tennis racquet with one string broken (he had
Buttered Side Down |
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 Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: loss. I would recommend the calling in of your large loans, and the
making of only sixty and ninety day or call loans until general
business revives. And now, there is one thing more, and I will have
finished with the bank. Here are six notes aggregating something like
$40,000. They are secured, according to their faces, by various
stocks, bonds, shares, etc. to the value of $70,000. Those securities
are missing from the notes to which they should be attached. I suppose
you have them in the safe or vault. You will permit me to examine
them."
Major Tom's light-blue eyes turned unflinchingly toward the examiner.
"No, sir," he said, in a low but steady tone; "those securities are
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