| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: ready, and all things neat?
NATHANIEL.
All things is ready. How near is our master?
GRUMIO.
E'en at hand, alighted by this; and therefore be not,--
Cock's passion, silence! I hear my master.
[Enter PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA.]
PETRUCHIO.
Where be these knaves? What! no man at door
To hold my stirrup nor to take my horse?
Where is Nathaniel, Gregory, Philip?--
The Taming of the Shrew |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: that saw her that night they held up the locomotive. Got him to meet me
at Edgeford and make a big talk to the superintendent. Made a big talk
myself. I said, 'Put that girl in charge of Separ, and the boys'll quit
shooting your water-tank. But Tubercle can't influence 'em.' 'Tubercle?'
says the superintendent. 'What's that?' And when I told him it was the
agent, he flapped his two hands down on the chair arms each side of him
and went to rockin' up and down. I said the agent was just a temptation
to the boys to be gay right along, and they'd keep a-shooting. 'You can
choose between Tubercle and your tank,' I said; 'but you've got to move
one of 'em from Separ if yu' went peace.' The sheriff backed me up good,
too. He said a man couldn't do much with Separ the way it was now; but a
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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 The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: done this, but I had placed my manuscript in the hands of a literary
agent, had permitted it to be sold, had seen the greater portion of it
appear in the Strand Magazine, and was setting to work again upon the
scenario of the play I had commenced at Lympne before I realised that the
end was not yet. And then, following me from Amalfi to Algiers, there
reached me (it is now about six months ago) one of the most astounding
communications I have ever been fated to receive. Briefly, it informed me
that Mr. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch electrician, who has been experimenting
with certain apparatus akin to the apparatus used by Mr. Tesla in America,
in the hope of discovering some method of communication with Mars, was
receiving day by day a curiously fragmentary message in English, which was
The First Men In The Moon |
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 Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a
beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of
the master, in the tone of menace or command, or, peradventure,
by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy
loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he
was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim,
"Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars
certainly were not spoiled.
I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of
those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of
their subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
