| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: then b' gosh, I would prefer to never be a lecturer, a-ridin' round in classy
cars and smoking fifty-cent cigars, and never more I want to roam; I simply
want to be back home, a-eatin' flap jacks, hash, and ham, with folks who savvy
whom I am!
"But when I get that lonely spell, I simply seek the best hotel, no matter in
what town I be--St. Paul, Toledo, or K.C., in Washington, Schenectady, in
Louisville or Albany. And at that inn it hits my dome that I again am right
at home. If I should stand a lengthy spell in front of that first-class hotel,
that to the drummers loves to cater, across from some big film theayter; if I
should look around and buzz, and wonder in what town I was, I swear that I
could never tell! For all the crowd would be so swell, in just the same fine
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: in a sketch, though far less vividly than they were reflected in
the polished breastplate of John Endicott.
In close vicinity to the sacred edifice appeared that important
engine of Puritanic authority, the whipping-post--with the soil
around it well trodden by the feet of evil doers, who had there
been disciplined. At one corner of the meeting-house was the
pillory, and at the other the stocks; and, by a singular good
fortune for our sketch, the head of an Episcopalian and suspected
Catholic was grotesquely incased in the former machine while a
fellow-criminal, who had boisterously quaffed a health to the
king, was confined by the legs in the latter. Side by side, on
Twice Told Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow,
And time doth weary time with her complaining.
She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow,
And both she thinks too long with her remaining:
Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining.
Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps;
And they that watch see time how slow it creeps.
Which all this time hath overslipp'd her thought,
That she with painted images hath spent;
Being from the feeling of her own grief brought
By deep surmise of others' detriment:
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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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: on the extreme edge of the reeds. Occasionally they would pop their
heads out like rabbits from a burrow, and then, catching sight of me
standing about fifty yards away, draw them back again. I knew that it
must be getting pretty warm behind them, and that they could not keep
the game up for long; and I was not mistaken, for suddenly all four of
them broke cover together, the old black-maned lion leading by a few
yards. I never saw a more splendid sight in all my hunting experience
than those four lions bounding across the veldt, overshadowed by the
dense pall of smoke and backed by the fiery furnace of the burning
reeds.
"I reckoned that they would pass, on their way to the bushy kloof,
Long Odds |
