| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and
pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.
The silence of the theatre behind him ended with a curious
snapping sound, followed by the heavy roaring of a rising crowd
and the interlaced clatter of many voices. The matinie was over.
He stood aside, edged a little into the rain to let the throng
pass. A small boy rushed out, sniffed in the damp, fresh air and
turned up the collar of his coat; came three or four couples in a
great hurry; came a further scattering of people whose eyes as
they emerged glanced invariably, first at the wet street, then at
the rain-filled air, finally at the dismal sky; last a dense,
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: can't accept anything from a stranger. I know you're all right, and
I'm tremendously obliged, but I couldn't think of borrowing from
anybody. You see, I'm Marcus Clayton--the Claytons of Roanoke County,
Virginia, you know. The young lady is Miss Eva Bedford--I reckon
you've heard of the Bedfords. She's seventeen and one of the Bedfords
of Bedford County. We've eloped from home to get married, and we
wanted to see New York. We got in this afternoon. Somebody got my
pocketbook on the ferry-boat, and I had only three cents in change
outside of it. I'll get some work somewhere to-morrow, and we'll get
married."
"But, I say, old man," said Pilkins, in confidential low tones, "you
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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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: consciences warped into fruitless agony concerning questions which
the laws of common serviceable life would have either solved for
them in an instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any
true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night,
with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been
the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm
will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent
peace.
So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin verses, and
called them educated; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a
ball with a bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can they
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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 Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: sense of the heavy burden of dependency, pauperism and delinquency
upon the normal and healthy sections of the community.
Statistics now available also inform us that more than a million
dollars are spent annually to support the public and private
institutions in the state of New York for the segregation of the
feeble-minded and the epileptic. A million and a half is spent for
the up-keep of state prisons, those homes of the ``defective
delinquent.'' Insanity, which, we should remember, is to a great
extent hereditary, annually drains from the state treasury no less
than $11,985,695.55, and from private sources and endowments another
twenty millions. When we learn further that the total number of
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