| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: "You see pain gets some folks different from others; and it
always kinder makes him savage."
"Oh, that's all right," Douglas answered, quickly. His own life
had been so lonely, that he could understand the selfish yearning
in the big man's heart. "You must do what you think best about
these things; Mandy and I will look after the rest."
Jim hung his head, feeling somehow that the pastor had seen
straight into his heart and discovered his petty weakness. He
was about to turn toward the door when it was thrown open by
Barker.
"Where is she?" shouted the manager, looking from one to the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: twenty-four hours more the worst would be past. He would give a
good deal to know what that mad Irishman, O'Halloran, was doing
just now. If he could once get hold of him, the opposition would
collapse like a house of cards.
At that precise moment in walked the mad Irishman pat to the
Mexican's thought of him.
"Buenos noches, excellency. I understand yon have been looking
for me. I am, senor, yours to command." The big Irishman brought
his heels together and gave a mocking military salute.
The governor's first thought was that he was a victim of
treachery, his second that he was a dead man, his third that he
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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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: looking across their silence to the deeper silence of the woods that
bordered them, the brooding woods, the pines and the liveoaks, misty with
the motionless hanging moss, and misty also in that Southern air that
deepened when it came among their trunks to a caressing, mysterious,
purple veil. Every line of this landscape, the straight forest top, the
feathery breaks in it of taller trees, the curving marsh, every line and
every hue and every sound inscrutably spoke sadness. I heard a
mocking-bird once in some blossoming wild fruit tree that we gradually
reached and left gradually behind; and more than once I saw other
blossoms, and the yellow of the trailing jessamine; but the bird could
not sing the silence away, and spring with all her abundance could not
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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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: that he should have touched the axe or wielded the sword in it.
What are the qualities of a dynasty? It should be national; that is
to say, revolutionary at a distance, not through acts committed,
but by reason of ideas accepted. It should be composed of past
and be historic; be composed of future and be sympathetic.
All this explains why the early revolutions contented themselves
with finding a man, Cromwell or Napoleon; and why the second
absolutely insisted on finding a family, the House of Brunswick
or the House of Orleans.
Royal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which,
bending over to the earth, takes root and becomes a fig-tree itself.
Les Miserables |
