| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: DUCHESS OF BERWICK. Oh, men don't matter. With women it is
different. We're good. Some of us are, at least. But we are
positively getting elbowed into the corner. Our husbands would
really forget our existence if we didn't nag at them from time to
time, just to remind them that we have a perfect legal right to do
so.
LORD DARLINGTON. It's a curious thing, Duchess, about the game of
marriage - a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion - the
wives hold all the honours, and invariably lose the odd trick.
DUCHESS OF BERWICK. The odd trick? Is that the husband, Lord
Darlington?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: my dungeon. Beloved land, why hast thou rejected me?
"But I shall triumph there yet!" he cried, speaking with an accent of
such intense conviction and such a ringing tone, that the boatman
started as at a trumpet call.
The stranger was standing in a prophetic attitude and gazing
southwards into the blue, pointing to his native home across the skyey
regions. The ascetic pallor of his face had given place to a glow of
triumph, his eyes flashed, he was as grand as a lion shaking his mane.
"But you, poor child," he went on, looking at Godefroid, whose cheeks
were beaded with glittering tears, "have you, like me, studied life
from blood-stained pages? What can you have to weep for, at your age?"
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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 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: no use, this you've been trying to do. You were a brave
fellow,--you had the right on your side; but it's all in vain, and
out of the question, for you to struggle. You are in the devil's
hands;--he is the strongest, and you must give up!"
Give up! and, had not human weakness and physical agony whispered
that, before? Tom started; for the bitter woman, with her wild
eyes and melancholy voice, seemed to him an embodiment of the
temptation with which he had been wrestling.
"O Lord! O Lord!" he groaned, "how can I give up?"
"There's no use calling on the Lord,--he never hears," said
the woman, steadily; "there isn't any God, I believe; or, if there
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
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 Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: burst from his long-pent lips. Emma McChesney glanced behind
her. Her interpreter threw up helpless hands, replying with a
still more terrifying burst of vowels. Bewildered, a little
frightened, Mrs. McChesney stood helplessly by. The official
laid a none too gentle hand on her shoulder. A little group of
lesser officials stood, comic-opera fashion, in the background.
And then Emma McChesney's New York training came to her aid. She
ignored the voluble interpreter. She remained coolly unruffled
by the fusillade of Portuguese. Quietly she opened her hand bag
and plunged her fingers deep, deep therein. Her blue eyes gazed
confidingly up into the Brazilian's snapping black ones, and as
Emma McChesney & Co. |
