| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: hard muscles of his thighs against her body and the buttons of his
coat pressing into her breast. A warm tide of feeling, bewildering,
frightening, swept over her, carrying out of her mind the time and
place and circumstances. She felt as limp as a rag doll, warm, weak
and helpless, and his supporting arms were so pleasant.
"You don't want to change your mind about what I said last month?
There's nothing like danger and death to give an added fillip. Be
patriotic, Scarlett. Think how you would be sending a soldier to
his death with beautiful memories."
He was kissing her now and his mustache tickled her mouth, kissing
her with slow, hot lips that were so leisurely as though he had the
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: felt this was to be one. His mind had already started to play
variations on the subject. Tireless passion, fierce jealousy,
longing to possess and crushthese alone were left of all his love
for Rosalind; these remained to him as payment for the loss of
his youthbitter calomel under the thin sugar of love's
exaltation.
In his room he undressed and wrapping himself in blankets to keep
out the chill October air drowsed in an armchair by the open
window.
He remembered a poem he had read months before:
"Oh staunch old heart who toiled so long for me, I waste my years
This Side of Paradise |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: embroidery, though I preferred looking over curious illuminated
missals, etc., etc.
The next day was the meeting of the County Agricultural Society. . .
. At the hour appointed we all repaired to the ground where the
prizes were to be given out. . . . Lord Braybrooke made first a most
paternal and interesting address, which showed me in the most
favorable view the relation between the noble and the lower class in
England, a relation which must depend much on the personal character
of the lord of the manor. . . . First came prizes to ploughmen, then
the plough boys, then the shepherds, then to such peasants as had
reared many children without aid, then to women who had been many
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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 Euthydemus by Plato: Yes, I said.
You agree then, that those animals only are yours with which you have the
power to do all these things which I was just naming?
I agree.
Then, after a pause, in which he seemed to be lost in the contemplation of
something great, he said: Tell me, Socrates, have you an ancestral Zeus?
Here, anticipating the final move, like a person caught in a net, who gives
a desperate twist that he may get away, I said: No, Dionysodorus, I have
not.
What a miserable man you must be then, he said; you are not an Athenian at
all if you have no ancestral gods or temples, or any other mark of
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