| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: success in business, too. She was born with a humanity
sense, and a value sense, and a something else that can't be
acquired. Ida Tarbell could have managed your whole Haynes-
Cooper plant, if she'd had to. So could a dozen other
women I could name. You don't see any sign of what you call
success on Jane Addams's face, do you? You wouldn't say, on
seeing her, that here was a woman who looked as if she might
afford hundred-dollar tailor suits and a town car. No. All
you see in her face is the reflection of the souls of all
the men and women she has worked to save. She has covered
her job--the job that the Lord intended her to cover. And
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: glad, and beg for a sight of it. And sometimes it would be a piece
of mirror, that showed the seeming of things; and then he would
say, "This can never be, for there should be more than seeming".
And sometimes it would be a lump of coal, which showed nothing; and
then he would say, "This can never be, for at least there is the
seeming". And sometimes it would be a touchstone indeed, beautiful
in hue, adorned with polishing, the light inhabiting its sides; and
when he found this, he would beg the thing, and the persons of that
place would give it him, for all men were very generous of that
gift; so that at the last he had his wallet full of them, and they
chinked together when he rode; and when he halted by the side of
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: there would be a colonnade of slim, straight tree-stems with the
light running down them as down the shafts of pillars, that looked as
if it ought to lead to something, and led only to a corner of sombre
and intricate jungle. Sometimes a spray of delicate foliage would be
thrown out flat, the light lying flatly along the top of it, so that
against a dark background it seemed almost luminous. There was a
great bush over the thicket (for, indeed, it was more of a thicket
than a wood); and the vague rumours that went among the tree-tops,
and the occasional rustling of big birds or hares among the
undergrowth, had in them a note of almost treacherous stealthiness,
that put the imagination on its guard and made me walk warily on the
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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 Bucolics by Virgil: Pasiphae with the love of her white bull-
Happy if cattle-kind had never been!-
O ill-starred maid, what frenzy caught thy soul
The daughters too of Proetus filled the fields
With their feigned lowings, yet no one of them
Of such unhallowed union e'er was fain
As with a beast to mate, though many a time
On her smooth forehead she had sought for horns,
And for her neck had feared the galling plough.
O ill-starred maid! thou roamest now the hills,
While on soft hyacinths he, his snowy side
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