| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: night's work was done. For two weeks now she had put on her hat
and coat and gone her way at one o'clock alone. She discovered
that to be taken home night after night under Heiny's tender escort
had taught her a ridiculous terror of the streets at night now that
she was without protection. Always the short walk from the car to
the flat where Miss Fink lived with her mother had been a glorious,
star-lit, all too brief moment. Now it was an endless and
terrifying trial, a thing of shivers and dread, fraught with horror
of passing the alley just back of Cassidey's buffet. There had
even been certain little half-serious, half-jesting talks about the
future into which there had entered the subject of a little
Buttered Side Down |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: flap its wings so--it makes quite a hurricane in the wood--
here's somebody's shawl being blown away!'
CHAPTER V
Wool and Water
She caught the shawl as she spoke, and looked about for the
owner: in another moment the White Queen came running wildly
through the wood, with both arms stretched out wide, as if she
were flying, and Alice very civilly went to meet her with the
shawl.
`I'm very glad I happened to be in the way,' Alice said, as she
helped her to put on her shawl again.
Through the Looking-Glass |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: or imitations of the Gorgias, Protagoras, and Euthydemus, which have been
observed in the Hippias, cannot with certainty be adduced on either side of
the argument. On the whole, more may be said in favour of the genuineness
of the Hippias than against it.
The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, and is interesting
as supplying an example of the manner in which the orators praised 'the
Athenians among the Athenians,' falsifying persons and dates, and casting a
veil over the gloomier events of Athenian history. It exhibits an
acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and was, perhaps,
intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper place of the
Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical opening and
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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 A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: how far her slumbers were genuine or feigned. Whether it were that the
brilliant sky, the pure country air, and the heady fragrance of the
first green shoots of the poplars, the catkins of willow, and the
flowers of the blackthorn had inclined his heart to open like all the
nature around him; or that any long restraint was too oppressive while
Caroline's sparkling eyes responded to his own, the Gentleman in Black
entered on a conversation with his young companion, as aimless as the
swaying of the branches in the wind, as devious as the flitting of the
butterflies in the azure air, as illogical as the melodious murmur of
the fields, and, like it, full of mysterious love. At that season is
not the rural country as tremulous as a bride that has donned her
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