| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: not know. I know only this, that I set out on the 18th of November
to visit my kind old guardian, and to have a last consultation with
him before my coming of age. And I know also that I have fallen
into the hands of some one who has an interest in my disappearance.
"There is some one in the next room with the old woman. I hear a
man s voice and they are quarrelling. They are talking of me. He
wants her to do something which she will not do. He commands her
to go away, but she refuses. What does he mean to do? I do not
want her to leave me alone. I do not hate her any more; I know
that she is not bad. When I listened I heard her speaking of me as
of an insane person. She really believes that I am ill. When the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: needs of the Church, and to his own salvation. He left the management
of his property to his niece, who gave him the income of it, and to
whom he paid a slender board in order to spend the surplus in secret
alms and gifts to the Church.
All the abbe's affections were concentrated on his niece, who regarded
him as a father, but an abstracted father, unable to conceive the
agitations of the flesh, and thanking God for maintaining his dear
daughter in a state of celibacy; for he had, from his youth up,
adopted the principles of Saint John Chrysostom, who wrote that "the
virgin state is as far above the marriage state as the angel is above
humanity." Accustomed to reverence her uncle, Mademoiselle Cormon
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: gave up to them the four rooms in the second story, and installed
myself in one of the attic chambers. Here I could hear the music
of the rain close above my head, and through the little gable
window, as I lay in bed, watch the colors of the morning gradually
steal over the distant shores. The end was, we were all satisfied.
"`Now for our first meal in Arcadia!' was the next cry. Mrs.
Shelldrake, like a prudent housekeeper, marched off to the kitchen,
where Perkins had already kindled a fire. We looked in at the
door, but thought it best to allow her undisputed sway in such a
narrow realm. Eunice was unpacking some loaves of bread and paper
bags of crackers; and Miss Ringtop, smiling through her ropy curls,
|
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 Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: Not so with Freda. She had no cause to love men, but, by some
strange alchemy of her nature, her heart went out to women,--to
women whom she had less cause to love. And her heart went out to
Flossie, even then travelling the Long Trail and facing into the
bitter North to meet a man who might not wait for her. A
shrinking, clinging sort of a girl, Freda pictured her, with weak
mouth and pretty pouting lips, blow-away sun-kissed hair, and eyes
full of the merry shallows and the lesser joys of life. But she
also pictured Flossie, face nose-strapped and frost-rimed,
stumbling wearily behind the dogs. Wherefore she smiled, dancing
one night, upon Floyd Vanderlip.
|
