| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: frost. And blamed little you know Daylight, if you think frost
kin stop 'm."
"Freeze his lungs if he travels in it," was the reply.
"Freeze pap and lollypop! Look here, Hines, you only ben in this
here country three years. You ain't seasoned yet. I've seen
Daylight do fifty miles up on the Koyokuk on a day when the
thermometer busted at seventy-two."
Hines shook his head dolefully.
"Them's the kind that does freeze their lungs," he lamented. "If
Daylight pulls out before this snap breaks, he'll never get
through--an' him travelin' without tent or fly."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: animal, and as I lay sprawling on the fore-tongue of the waggon, it
occurred to me that he would look uncommonly well in a cage. He stood
there by the carcass of poor Kaptein, and deliberately disembowelled him
as neatly as a butcher could have done. All this while I dared not
move, for he kept lifting his head and keeping an eye on me as he licked
his bloody chops. When he had cleaned Kaptein out he opened his mouth
and roared, and I am not exaggerating when I say that the sound shook
the waggon. Instantly there came back an answering roar.
"'Heavens!' I thought, 'there is his mate.'
"Hardly was the thought out of my head when I caught sight in the
moonlight of the lioness bounding along through the long grass, and
Long Odds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: in getting five hours' sleep during the day. ``I take my baby to bed
with me, but he cries, and my little four-year-old boy cries, too, and
comes in to make me get up, so you can't call that a very good
sleep.''
The problem among unmarried women or those without family is not the
same, this investigator points out. ``They sleep longer by day than
they normally would by night.'' We are also informed that pregnant
women work at night in the mills, sometimes up to the very hour of
delivery. ``It's queer,'' exclaimed a woman supervisor of one of the
Rhode Island mills, ``but some women, both on the day and the night
shift, will stick to their work right up to the last minute, and will
|
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 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: himself, necessitated heavy expenses. Neither husband nor wife
considered money when it was a question of giving pleasure to their
child, from whom they had never been willing to separate. Imagine the
happiness of the poor parvenu peasant as he listened to his charming
Cesarine playing a sonata of Steibelt's on the piano, and singing a
ballad; or when he found her writing the French language correctly, or
reading Racine, father and son, and explaining their beauties, or
sketching a landscape, or painting in sepia! What joy to live again in
a flower so pure, so lovely, which had never left the maternal stem;
an angel whose budding graces and whose earliest developments he had
passionately watched; an only daughter, incapable of despising her
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
