| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: In the lighted house of her father, why should Taheia start?
Taheia heavy of hair, Taheia tender of heart,
Taheia the well-descended, a bountiful dealer in love,
Nimble of foot like the deer, and kind of eye like the dove?
Sly and shy as a cat, with never a change of face,
Taheia slips to the door, like one that would breathe a space;
Saunters and pauses, and looks at the stars, and lists to the seas;
Then sudden and swift as a cat, she plunges under the trees.
Swift as a cat she runs, with her garment gathered high,
Leaping, nimble of foot, running, certain of eye;
And ever to guide her way over the smooth and the sharp,
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: thoughts to listen. I had said nothing to the two detectives.
If Mr. Jamieson had been there, I should have told him
everything, but I could not go to these strange men and tell them
my niece had been missing in the middle of the night; that she
had not gone to bed at all; that while I was searching for her
through the house, I had met a stranger who, when I fainted, had
carried me into a room and left me there, to get better or not,
as it might happen.
The whole situation was terrible: had the issues been less vital,
it would have been absurd. Here we were, guarded day and night
by private detectives, with an extra man to watch the
The Circular Staircase |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: fever seemed to be growing in him, nor did the increasing richness of the
test-pans allay this fever. There was a flush in his cheek other than that
made by the heat of the sun, and he was oblivious to fatigue and the passage
of time. When he filled a pan with dirt, he ran down the hill to wash it; nor
could he forbear running up the hill again, panting and stumbling profanely,
to refill the pan.
He was now a hundred yards from the water, and the inverted "V" was assuming
definite proportions. The width of the pay-dirt steadily decreased, and the
man extended in his mind's eye the sides of the "V" to their meeting-place far
up the hill. This was his goal, the apex of the "V," and he panned many times
to locate it.
|
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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: But an AVERAGE, which was what I meant to speak about, is one of
the most extraordinary subjects of observation and study. It is
awful in its uniformity, in its automatic necessity of action. Two
communities of ants or bees are exactly alike in all their actions,
so far as we can see. Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each,
are so nearly alike, that they are absolutely undistinguishable in
many cases by any definite mark, and there is nothing but the place
and time by which one can tell the "remarkably intelligent
audience" of a town in New York or Ohio from one in any New England
town of similar size. Of course, if any principle of selection has
come in, as in those special associations of young men which are
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
