| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: And a cup of coffee waiting--not a puny demitasse
That can scarcely hold a mouthful, but a cup of greater class;
And I fell to eating largely, for I could not be denied--
Oh, I'm sure a king would relish the sausage mother fried.
Times have changed and so have breakfasts; now each morning when I see
A dish of shredded something or of flakes passed up to me,
All my thoughts go back to boyhood, to the days of long ago,
When the morning meal meant something more than vain and idle show.
And I hunger, Oh, I hunger, in a way I cannot hide,
For a plate of steaming sausage like the kind my mother fried.
Friends
Just Folks |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for
centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made
him what I now saw him--what he was. Such opinions need no
comment, and I will make none.
Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small
portion of the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be
supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We
pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse
of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and
Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by
Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indagine,
The Fall of the House of Usher |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: from him. He pretends to be afraid of his wife; and they chaff
him as to her beating him and so forth; but when they add that
the ring is accursed and will bring death upon him, he discloses
to them, as unconsciously as Julius Caesar disclosed it long ago,
that secret of heroism, never to let your life be shaped by fear
of its end.* So he keeps the ring; and they leave him to his
fate. The hunting party now finds him; and they all sit down
together to make a meal by the river side, Siegfried telling them
meanwhile the story of his adventures. When he approaches the
subject of Brynhild, as to whom his memory is a blank, Hagen
pours an antidote to the love philtre into his drinking horn,
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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 The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: The man in the water began suddenly to climb up the ladder,
and I hastened away from the rail to fetch some clothes.
Before entering the cabin I stood still, listening in the lobby at
the foot of the stairs. A faint snore came through the closed door
of the chief mate's room. The second mate's door was on the hook,
but the darkness in there was absolutely soundless. He, too,
was young and could sleep like a stone. Remained the steward,
but he was not likely to wake up before he was called.
I got a sleeping suit out of my room and, coming back on deck,
saw the naked man from the sea sitting on the main hatch,
glimmering white in the darkness, his elbows on his knees and his
The Secret Sharer |
