| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: pylorus becomes indurated and forms a scirrhus, of which the patient
dies. Well, I have reached that point, my dear friend. The induration
is proceeding and nothing checks it. Just look at my yellow skin, my
feverish eyes, my excessive thinness. I am withering away. But what is
to be done? I brought the seeds of the disease home with me from the
emigration; heaven knows what I suffered then! My marriage, which
might have repaired the wrong, far from soothing my ulcerated mind
increased the wound. What did I find? ceaseless fears for the
children, domestic jars, a fortune to remake, economies which required
great privations, which I was obliged to impose upon my wife, but
which I was the one to suffer from; and then,--I can tell this to none
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: fearful and of the hopeful?
NICIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the fearful, and the hopeful, are admitted to be future
goods and future evils?
NICIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And the same science has to do with the same things in the
future or at any time?
NICIAS: That is true.
SOCRATES: Then courage is not the science which is concerned with the
fearful and hopeful, for they are future only; courage, like the other
sciences, is concerned not only with good and evil of the future, but of
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: for her?"
"My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove
of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie. A piano," I
went on, "with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand
head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies
always hitched at a post for 'the missus '--and May Martha Mangum to
spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me,
and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they
cannot be found of evenings. That," said I, "is what is to be; and a
fig--a dried, Smyrna, dago-stand fig--for your curriculums, cults, and
philosophy."
Options |
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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: it first and then her finger, and slipped it into place. It became
a rite, done as he did it, and she had a sense of something done that
could never be undone. When she looked up at him he was very pale.
"Forsaking all others, so long as we both shall live," he said,
unsteadily.
"So long as we both shall live," she repeated.
However she had to take it off later, for Mrs. Wheeler, it developed,
had very pronounced ideas of engagement rings. They were put on the
day the notices were sent to the newspapers, and not before. So
Elizabeth wore her ring around her neck on a white ribbon, inside
her camisole, until such time as her father would consent to announce
The Breaking Point |
