| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: "I am afraid my son will miss you."
"Ah, dear madame," said Eugenia, with a little laugh, "I can't stay
in America for your son!"
"Don't you like America?"
The Baroness looked at the front of her dress. "If I liked it--
that would not be staying for your son!"
Mrs. Acton gazed at her with her grave, tender eyes, as if she
had not quite understood. The Baroness at last found something
irritating in the sweet, soft stare of her hostess; and if one
were not bound to be merciful to great invalids she would almost
have taken the liberty of pronouncing her, mentally, a fool.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: seem dead, yet there is plenty of life around you, at your feet, I
may almost say in the very stones on which you tread. And though
the place itself be dreary enough, a sheet of flat heather and a
little glen in it, with banks of dead fern, and a brown bog
between them, and a few fir-trees struggling up--yet, if you only
have eyes to see it, that little bit of glen is beautiful and
wonderful,--so beautiful and so wonderful and so cunningly
devised, that it took thousands of years to make it; and it is
not, I believe, half finished yet.
How do I know all that? Because a fairy told it me; a fairy who
lives up here upon the moor, and indeed in most places else, if
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: took it without apparent hesitation. Into the ear of the bullock
he sent the lead crashing. The brute stumbled and went down head
over heels. Its flying hoofs struck the flanks of the pony, but
the bronco stuck to its feet, and next moment staggered out from
among the herd stragglers and came to halt.
The man slid from its back and lifted down the half-fainting
girl. She clung to him, white a trembling. "Oh, it was horrible,
Ned!" She could still look down in imagination upon the sea of
dun backs that swayed and surged about them like storm-tossed
waves.
"It was a near thing, but we made it, girl. So did Jim. He got
|
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 Mother by Owen Wister: necessary among even the most entertaining and agreeable people. Our
skilful hostess had assembled us in the country, beneath a roof of New
York luxury, a luxury which has come in these later days to be so much
more than princely. By day, the grounds afforded us both golf and tennis,
the stables provided motor cars and horses to ride or drive over
admirable roads, through beautiful scenery that was embellished by a
magnificent autumn season. At nightfall, the great house itself received
us in the arms of supreme comfort, fed us sumptuously, and after dinner
ministered to our middle-aged bodies with chairs and sofas of the highest
development.
The plan devised by our hostess, Mrs. Davenport, that a story should be
|
