| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: "I don't 'want' anything - the proposal's your own. But you must
remember that that's the way we do things NOW," said Mr. Pinhorn
with another dig Mr. Deedy.
Unregenerate as I was I could read the queer implications of this
speech. The present owner's superior virtue as well as his deeper
craft spoke in his reference to the late editor as one of that
baser sort who deal in false representations. Mr. Deedy would as
soon have sent me to call on Neil Paraday as he would have
published a "holiday-number"; but such scruples presented
themselves as mere ignoble thrift to his successor, whose own
sincerity took the form of ringing door-bells and whose definition
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: not an easy one; I quite understand the nature of it. And so leaving the
event with God, in obedience to the law I will now make my defence.
I will begin at the beginning, and ask what is the accusation which has
given rise to the slander of me, and in fact has encouraged Meletus to
proof this charge against me. Well, what do the slanderers say? They
shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit:
'Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things
under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better
cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others.' Such is the
nature of the accusation: it is just what you have yourselves seen in the
comedy of Aristophanes (Aristoph., Clouds.), who has introduced a man whom
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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 A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: out of the Valley into the great world beyond. The roomy sleigh was
packed full with huge sacks of toys, and as the reindeer dashed onward
our jolly old Santa laughed and whistled and sang for very joy. For
in all his merry life this was the one day in the year when he was
happiest--the day he lovingly bestowed the treasures of his workshop
upon the little children.
It would be a busy night for him, he well knew. As he whistled and
shouted and cracked his whip again, he reviewed in mind all the towns
and cities and farmhouses where he was expected, and figured that he
had just enough presents to go around and make every child happy. The
reindeer knew exactly what was expected of them, and dashed along so
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: past drying. I amused myself one winter day with sliding this
piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with
one end of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on
the ice; or I tied several logs together with a birch withe, and
then, with a longer birch or alder which had a book at the end,
dragged them across. Though completely waterlogged and almost as
heavy as lead, they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire;
nay, I thought that they burned better for the soaking, as if the
pitch, being confined by the water, burned longer, as in a lamp.
Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, says
that "the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences
Walden |
