| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: nothing of the crime, since the--the party in the closet--is
neither your father, nor your brother, nor your creditor, nor
your mother-in-law, nor what they call an injured husband--'
'O, my dear sir!' interjected Pitman, horrified.
'Since, in short,' continued the lawyer, 'you had no possible
interest in the crime, we have a perfectly free field before us
and a safe game to play. Indeed, the problem is really
entertaining; it is one I have long contemplated in the light of
an A. B. case; here it is at last under my hand in specie; and I
mean to pull you through. Do you hear that?--I mean to pull you
through. Let me see: it's a long time since I have had what I
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: live at all. There's Austria, which has less than a hundred clerks in
her war ministry, while the salaries and pensions of ours amount to a
third of our whole budget, a thing that was unheard of before the
Revolution. I sum up all I've been saying in one single remark,
namely, that the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres, which
seems to have very little to do, had better offer a prize for the
ablest answer to the following question: Which is the best organized
State; the one that does many things with few officials, or the one
that does next to nothing with an army of them?"
Poiret. "Is that your last word?"
Bixiou. "Yes, sir! whether English, French, German or Italian,--I let
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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 The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. 150
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
The Waste Land |
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 Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: No tonic and ambitious irritant
Of increase or of want
Has made an otherwise insensate waste
Of ages overthrown
A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste
Of other ages that are still to be
Depleted and rewarded variously
Because a few, by fate's economy,
Shall seem to move the world the way it goes;
No soft evangel of equality,
Safe cradled in a communal repose
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