| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: whatever it is, 'The shortness of life! The shortness of life!' I've only
one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, waiting out
there, undiscovered, unexplored."
"But, if you feel like that, why--" began Linda quickly.
"Ah!" cried Jonathan. And that "ah!" was somehow almost exultant. "There
you have me. Why? Why indeed? There's the maddening, mysterious
question. Why don't I fly out again? There's the window or the door or
whatever it was I came in by. It's not hopelessly shut--is it? Why don't
I find it and be off? Answer me that, little sister." But he gave her no
time to answer.
"I'm exactly like that insect again. For some reason"--Jonathan paused
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: Bernouin alone knew a little more than the others. Bernouin,
seeing that his master did not return and hearing the stroke
of midnight, had made an examination of the orangery. The
first door, barricaded with furniture, had aroused in him
certain suspicions, but without communicating his suspicions
to any one he had patiently worked his way into the midst of
all that confusion. Then he came to the corridor, all the
doors of which he found open; so, too, was the door of
Athos's chamber and that of the park. From the latter point
it was easy to follow tracks on the snow. He saw that these
tracks tended toward the wall; on the other side he found
Twenty Years After |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: to raise them spondulicks somehow. Maybe we can--Great Sam Houston! do
you hear that?"
Merwin broke into a run, and Longley kept with him, hearing only a
rather pleasing whistle somewhere in the night rendering the
lugubrious air of "The Cowboy's Lament."
"It's the only tune he knows," shouted Merwin, as he ran. "I'll bet--"
They were at the door of Merwin's house. He kicked it open and fell
over an old valise lying in the middle of the floor. A sunburned,
firm-jawed youth, stained by travel, lay upon the bed puffing at a
brown cigarette.
"What's the word, Ed?" gasped Merwin.
Heart of the West |
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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: the lawsuit, if undertaken, would strike the public as an act of
ingratitude;" and so forth. Letting Birotteau go before them to the
staircase, the lawyer detained Madame de Listomere a moment to entreat
her, if she valued her own peace of mind, not to involve herself in
the matter.
But that evening the poor vicar, suffering the torments of a man under
sentence of death who awaits in the condemned cell at Bicetre the
result of his appeal for mercy, could not refrain from telling his
assembled friends the result of his visit to the lawyer.
"I don't know a single pettifogger in Tours," said Monsieur de
Bourbonne, "except that Radical lawyer, who would be willing to take
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