| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: wagon, the old apple woman without teeth, the
morgue keeper, the plumber, the janitor, the
red-armed waffle baker in the window of a
restaurant full of marble-topped tables and
pallid-looking girls, the subway guard and the
millionaire,
And they all said,
"Poppies, poppies, poppies,
We have never known but three colors!"
I am a Great Virile Spirit;
I, with my Ego,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: planning to write a book--a book of knowledge, in the true
sense--a great book about human life. Not a history, not a
theory, but a real view of life, its hidden motives, its
secret relations. How different they are from what men dream
and imagine and play that they are! How much darker, how much
smaller, and therefore how much more interesting and wonderful.
No one has yet written--perhaps because no one has yet
conceived--such a book as I have in mind. I might call it a
'Bionopsis.'"
"But surely," said I, "you have chosen a strange place to
write it--the Hilltop School--this quiet and secluded region!
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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 Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo: thing' who gives his wife everything she asks for, while she is
running around with--with my best friend, for all I know."
"Oh, no, no," protested Jimmy nervously. "I wouldn't say that."
"Even if she weren't running around," continued Alfred excitedly,
without heeding his friend's interruption, "what have we to look
forward to? What have we to look backward to?"
Again Jimmy's face was a blank.
Alfred answered his own question by lifting his arms tragically
toward Heaven. "One eternal round of wrangles and rows! A
childless home! Do you think she wants babies?" he cried,
wheeling about on Jimmy, and daring him to answer in the
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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: it down with a pannikin of black coffee--for it was difficult to get
preserved milk in those days. Just as I had finished, and the driver, a
man called Tom, was washing up the things, in comes the young scoundrel
of a voorlooper driving one ox before him.
"'Where are the other oxen?' I asked.
"'Koos!' he said, 'Koos! the other oxen have gone away. I turned my
back for a minute, and when I looked round again they were all gone
except Kaptein, here, who was rubbing his back against a tree.'
"'You mean that you have been asleep, and let them stray, you villain.
I will rub your back against a stick,' I answered, feeling very angry,
for it was not a pleasant prospect to be stuck up in that fever trap for
Long Odds |
