| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: A miser was he, with a miser's nose,
And eyes like little dollars in the dark.
His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark;
And when he spoke there came like sullen blows
Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close,
As if a cur were chary of its bark.
Glad for the murmur of his hard renown,
Year after year he shambled through the town, --
A loveless exile moving with a staff;
And oftentimes there crept into his ears
A sound of alien pity, touched with tears, --
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: A fact worthy of remark is the aversion shown to such conversations by
women who are enjoying some illicit happiness; they maintain before
the eyes of the world a reserved, prudish, and even timid countenance;
they seem to ask silence on the subject, or some condonation of their
pleasure from society. When, on the contrary, a woman talks freely of
such catastrophes, and seems to take pleasure in doing so, allowing
herself to explain the emotions that justify the guilty parties, we
may be sure that she herself is at the crossways of indecision, and
does not know what road she might take.
During this winter, the Comtesse de Vandenesse heard the great voice
of the social world roaring in her ears, and the wind of its stormy
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: and believe me, Sancho, that agile country lass was and is Dulcinea
del Toboso, who is as much enchanted as the mother that bore her;
and when we least expect it, we shall see her in her own proper
form, and then Sancho will he disabused of the error he is under at
present."
"All that's very possible," said Sancho Panza; "and now I'm
willing to believe what my master says about what he saw in the cave
of Montesinos, where he says he saw the lady Dulcinea del Toboso in
the very same dress and apparel that I said I had seen her in when I
enchanted her all to please myself. It must be all exactly the other
way, as your ladyship says; because it is impossible to suppose that
Don Quixote |
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 Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: curious smile that had in it more of bitterness and less of
mirth than any smile has a right to have.
Mrs. Brandeis had left a will, far-sighted business woman
that she was. It was a terse, clear-headed document, that
gave "to Fanny Brandeis, my daughter," the six-thousand-
dollar insurance, the stock, good-will and fixtures of
Brandeis' Bazaar, the house furnishings, the few pieces of
jewelry in their old-fashioned setting. To Theodore was
left the sum of fifteen hundred dollars. He had received
his share in the years of his musical education.
Fanny Brandeis did not go to Chicago that January. She took
Fanny Herself |
