| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: Sundays, Henry putters around, putting up shelves, and fooling
around with a can of paint. I always tell him he ought to have
lived on a farm, where he'd have elbow-room."
"No wonder you're so happy and busy," Emma exclaimed, and
patted the girl's fresh, young cheek.
Hortense was silent a moment.
"I'm happy," she said, at last, "but I ain't busy. And--well,
if you're not busy, you can't be happy very long, can you?"
"No," said Emma, "idleness, when you're not used to it, is
misery."
"There! You've said it! It's like running on half-time when
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: fish-hawks circling far below. And the sides of that gulf were
one wild welter of color--crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber,
honey splashed with port wine, snow white, vermilion, lemon, and
silver gray in wide washes. The sides did not fall sheer, but
were graven by time, and water, and air into monstrous heads of
kings, dead chiefs--men and women of the old time. So far below
that no sound of its strife could reach us, the Yellowstone River
ran a finger-wide strip of jade green.
The sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to
those that nature had already laid there.
Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: shout, nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds. A pure,
unmixed blood, I fancy: shows itself in the slight angular
bodies and sharply-cut facial lines. It is nearly thirty years
since the Wolfes lived here. Their lives were like those of
their class: incessant labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms,
eating rank pork and molasses, drinking--God and the distillers
only know what; with an occasional night in jail, to atone for
some drunken excess. Is that all of their lives?--of the
portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming the
streets to-day?--nothing beneath?--all? So many a political
reformer will tell you,--and many a private reformer, too, who
Life in the Iron-Mills |
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 Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: that mixture of remoteness, and childish certainty of being the
centre of civilization of which her affectionate dreams had told.
One evening in June, a single passenger landed upon the steamboat
wharf. The tide was high, there was a fine crowd of spectators,
and the younger portion of the company followed her with subdued
excitement up the narrow street of the salt-aired, white-
clapboarded little town.
II
Mrs. Todd
LATER, THERE WAS only one fault to find with this choice of a
summer lodging-place, and that was its complete lack of seclusion.
|
