| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: be made to reappear unless by an equally delicate rendering of
thought; there are portraits which require the infusion of a soul, and
mean nothing unless the subtlest expression of the speaking
countenance is given; furthermore, there are things which we know not
how to say or do without the aid of secret harmonies which a day, an
hour, a fortunate conjunction of celestial signs, or an inward moral
tendency may produce.
Such mysterious revelations are imperatively needed in order to tell
this simple history, in which we seek to interest those souls that are
naturally grave and reflective and find their sustenance in tender
emotions. If the writer, like the surgeon beside his dying friend, is
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: odor was it redolent! That heavy, enervating odor of her
hair--her wonderful, royal hair! The smell of that little
hairbrush was talismanic. He had but to close his eyes to
see her as distinctly as in a mirror. He saw her tiny,
round figure, dressed all in black--for, curiously enough,
it was his very first impression of Trina that came back to
him now--not the Trina of the later occasions, not the Trina
of the blue cloth skirt and white sailor. He saw her as he
had seen her the day that Marcus had introduced them: saw
her pale, round face; her narrow, half-open eyes, blue like
the eyes of a baby; her tiny, pale ears, suggestive of
McTeague |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: Corner, I will give you half of a fisherman's luncheon, and will
cook your char for you on a board before an open wood-fire, if you
are not in a hurry. Though I belong to a nation which is reported
to be curious, I will promise to trouble you with no inquisitive
questions; and if you will but talk to me at your will, you shall
find me a ready listener."
So we made ourselves comfortable on the shady bank, and while I
busied myself in splitting the fish and pinning it open on a bit of
board that I had found in a pile of driftwood, and setting it up
before the fire to broil, my new companion entertained me with the
sweetest and friendliest talk that I had ever heard.
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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 The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Baths, one could be no more surprised than was I to see a
perfectly good quart thermos bottle turning and twisting in the
surf of Cape Farewell at the southern extremity of Greenland.
I rescued it, but I was soaked above the knees doing it; and then
I sat down in the sand and opened it, and in the long twilight
read the manuscript, neatly written and tightly folded, which was
its contents.
You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative
idiot like myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall
give it to you here, omitting quotation marks--which are difficult
of remembrance. In two minutes you will forget me.
The Land that Time Forgot |
