| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: The sex wasn't right, and we hadn't any ladder anyway. Then she
wanted to ride it, and look at the scenery. Thirty or forty feet
of its tail was lying on the ground, like a fallen tree, and she
thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken; when she got
to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and would
have hurt herself but for me.
Was she satisfied now? No. Nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration;
untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them.
It is the right spirit, I concede it; it attracts me; I feel the
influence of it; if I were with her more I think I should take it
up myself. Well, she had one theory remaining about this colossus:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: table, had listened to praises of his wife, his girls, of himself even.
"You're an ideal family, sir, an ideal family. It's like something one
reads about or sees on the stage."
"That's all right, my boy," old Mr. Neave would reply. "Try one of those;
I think you'll like them. And if you care to smoke in the garden, you'll
find the girls on the lawn, I dare say."
That was why the girls had never married, so people said. They could have
married anybody. But they had too good a time at home. They were too
happy together, the girls and Charlotte. H'm, h'm! Well, well. Perhaps
so...
By this time he had walked the length of fashionable Harcourt Avenue; he
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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 Adventure by Jack London: there's where she fooled me.
"Down in the Emily's cabin was them three soaks--you know them--
Fowler and Curtis and that Brahms chap. 'Have a drink,' says she.
I thought they looked surprised when she unlocked the whisky locker
and sent a nigger for the glasses and water-monkey. But she must
have tipped them off unbeknownst to me, and they knew just what to
do. 'Excuse me,' she says, 'I'm going on deck a minute.' Now that
minute was half an hour. I hadn't had a drink in ten days. I'm an
old man and the fever has weakened me. Then I took it on an empty
stomach, too, and there was them three soaks setting me an example,
they arguing for me to take the Flibberty to Poonga-Poonga, an' me
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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 Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: Then the cultivation became more rare. They suddenly entered upon
belts of sand bristling with thorny thickets. Flocks of sheep were
browsing among the stones; a woman with a blue fleece about her waist
was watching them. She fled screaming when she saw the soldiers' pikes
among the rocks.
They were marching through a kind of large passage bordered by two
chains of reddish coloured hillocks, when their nostrils were greeted
with a nauseous odour, and they thought that they could see something
extraordinary on the top of a carob tree: a lion's head reared itself
above the leaves.
They ran thither. It was a lion with his four limbs fastened to a
Salammbo |
