| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: shirtwaists with a broad "Gibson" shoulder tuck, when other
Winnebago women were still encased in linings and bodices.
Do not get the impression that she stood for emancipation,
or feminism, or any of those advanced things. They had
scarcely been touched on in those days. She was just an
extraordinarily alert woman, mentally and physically,
with a shrewd sense of values. Molly Brandeis never could
set a table without forgetting the spoons, or the salt, or
something, but she could add a double column of figures in
her head as fast as her eye could travel.
There she goes, running off with the story, as we were
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: He'll do it when he's old, he says. I wonder.
He may not be so ancient as all that.
For such as he, the thing that is to do
Will do itself, -- but there's a reckoning;
The sessions that are now too much his own,
The roiling inward of a stilled outside,
The churning out of all those blood-fed lines,
The nights of many schemes and little sleep,
The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking,
The vexed heart over-worn with too much aching, --
This weary jangling of conjoined affairs
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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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: gone already--they had to catch the tide or something. And Cam was
not ready and James was not ready and Nancy had forgotten to order the
sandwiches and Mr Ramsay had lost his temper and banged out of the
room.
"What's the use of going now?" he had stormed.
Nancy had vanished. There he was, marching up and down the terrace in
a rage. One seemed to hear doors slamming and voices calling all over
the house. Now Nancy burst in, and asked, looking round the room, in a
queer half dazed, half desperate way, "What does one send to the
Lighthouse?" as if she were forcing herself to do what she despaired of
ever being able to do.
To the Lighthouse |
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 Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: seemed to be dying and whose half-extinguished eyes apparently saw
nothing. A confused murmur which was heard without proved the presence
of a crowd, drawn to the neighborhood of the inn by the news of the
crime, and also perhaps by a desire to see the murderer. The step of
the sentries placed beneath the windows of the public room and the
rattle of their accoutrements could be heard above the talk of the
populace; but the inn was closed and the courtyard was empty and
silent.
Incapable of sustaining the glance of the officer who was gathering
his testimony, Prosper Magnan suddenly felt his hand pressed by a man,
and he raised his eyes to see who his protector could be in that crowd
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