| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: gay was their life there. Marcus had come away fairly sick
with envy; his rancor against the dentist--and against
himself, for that matter--knew no bounds. "And you might
'a' had it all yourself, Marcus Schouler," he muttered to
himself on the stairs. "You mushhead, you damn fool!"
Meanwhile, Marcus was becoming involved in the politics of
his ward. As secretary of the Polk Street Improvement Club
--which soon developed into quite an affair and began to
assume the proportions of a Republican political machine--he
found he could make a little, a very little more than enough
to live on. At once he had given up his position as Old
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: "I want my own sort!"
It literally made me bound forward. "There are not many of your
own sort, Miles!" I laughed. "Unless perhaps dear little Flora!"
"You really compare me to a baby girl?"
This found me singularly weak. "Don't you, then, LOVE
our sweet Flora?"
"If I didn't--and you, too; if I didn't--!" he repeated as if
retreating for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that,
after we had come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed
on me by the pressure of his arm, had become inevitable.
Mrs. Grose and Flora had passed into the church, the other
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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 Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: to his former self; and then Vas Kor had seen him but twice
in all his life. Little wonder that he did not know him.
During the evening Vas Kor announced that on
the morrow they should depart north toward Dusar,
picking up recruits at various stations along the way.
In a great field behind the house a flier lay--a fair-
sized cruiser-transport that would accommodate many men,
yet swift and well armed also. Here Carthoris slept,
and Kar Komak, too, with the other recruits, under guard
of the regular Dusarian warriors that manned the craft.
Toward midnight Vas Kor returned to the vessel from his
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: faced houses, which had begun to look livid in the dim dawn, had
they ever spoken so little to any need of his spirit? Great
builded voids, great crowded stillnesses put on, often, in the
heart of cities, for the small hours, a sort of sinister mask, and
it was of this large collective negation that Brydon presently
became conscious - all the more that the break of day was, almost
incredibly, now at hand, proving to him what a night he had made of
it.
He looked again at his watch, saw what had become of his time-
values (he had taken hours for minutes - not, as in other tense
situations, minutes for hours) and the strange air of the streets
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