| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: side-stepped in.
"Why, the i-de-a!" exclaimed Miss Katie, "is this you, Mr. Tansey?
It's after midnight. Aren't you ashamed to wake me up at such an hour
to let you in? You're just /awful/!"
"I was late," said Tansey, brilliantly.
"I should think you were! Ma was awfully worried about you. When you
weren't in by ten, that hateful Tom McGill said you were out calling
on another--said you were out calling on some young lady. I just
despise Mr. McGill. Well, I'm not going to scold you any more, Mr.
Tansey, if it /is/ a little late--Oh! I turned it the wrong way!"
Miss Katie gave a little scream. Absent-mindedly she had turned the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: forwards, ruminated till midnight upon both sides of the question.
The second night she went to her bureau, and having ordered Bridget to
bring her up a couple of fresh candles and leave them upon the table, she
took out her marriage-settlement, and read it over with great devotion:
and the third night (which was the last of my uncle Toby's stay) when
Bridget had pull'd down the night-shift, and was assaying to stick in the
corking pin--
--With a kick of both heels at once, but at the same time the most natural
kick that could be kick'd in her situation--for supposing ......... to be
the sun in its meridian, it was a north-east kick--she kick'd the pin out
of her fingers--the etiquette which hung upon it, down--down it fell to the
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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 Walking by Henry David Thoreau: laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning
joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our
wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the
house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to
myself, "There is one of us well, at any rate,"--and with a
sudden gush return to my senses.
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking
in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last,
just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear
stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning
sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in
Walking |
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 Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: her last home. She was carried by the old huntsman, the two
Martineaus, and Manette's husband. We went down by the road I had so
joyously ascended the day I first returned to her. We crossed the
valley of the Indre to the little cemetery of Sache--a poor village
graveyard, placed behind the church on the slope of the hill, where
with true humility she had asked to be buried beneath a simple cross
of black wood, "like a poor country-woman," she said. When I saw, from
the centre of the valley, the village church and the place of the
graveyard a convulsive shudder seized me. Alas! we have all our
Golgothas, where we leave the first thirty-three years of our lives,
with the lance-wound in our side, the crown of thorns and not of roses
The Lily of the Valley |
