| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: come to look at it all around, and chew at it and think it over,
don't it just bang anything you ever heard of?'
'Well, yes, it does seem to. But don't you think maybe it
was the Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy,
and not the St. Louis people'
'Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him from the very cradle--
they knew him a hundred times better than the St. Louis idiots could
have known him. No, if you have got any damned fools that you want
to realize on, take my advice--send them to St. Louis.'
I mentioned a great number of people whom I had formerly known.
Some were dead, some were gone away, some had prospered,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: {* Cf. B. xv.50}
And Menelaus of the fair hair answered him, and said: 'My
friend, lo, thou hast said all that a wise man might say or
do, yea, and an elder than thou;--for from such a sire too
thou art sprung, wherefore thou dost even speak wisely.
Right easily known is that man's seed, for whom Cronion
weaves the skein of luck at bridal and at birth: even as
now hath he granted prosperity to Nestor for ever for all
his days, that he himself should grow into a smooth old age
in his halls, and his sons moreover should be wise and the
best of spearsmen. But we will cease now the weeping which
The Odyssey |
