| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlaw the socialists!
And there's an elevator-runners' strike in New York and a lot of college boys
are taking their places. That's the stuff! And a mass-meeting in Birmingham's
demanded that this Mick agitator, this fellow De Valera, be deported. Dead
right, by golly! All these agitators paid with German gold anyway. And we
got no business interfering with the Irish or any other foreign government.
Keep our hands strictly off. And there's another well-authenticated rumor from
Russia that Lenin is dead. That's fine. It's beyond me why we don't just step
in there and kick those Bolshevik cusses out."
"That's so," said Mrs. Babbitt.
"And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls--a preacher, too!
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: Oh, there are breasts to bear his head,
And lips whereon his lips can lie,
But I must be till I am dead
Only a cry.
Gifts
I gave my first love laughter,
I gave my second tears,
I gave my third love silence
Through all the years.
My first love gave me singing,
My second eyes to see,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: tainted with a form of insanity which is known under various
names, from the ``moral insanity'' of Pritchard to the ``reasoning
madness'' of Verga. Moral insanity, illustrated by the works of
Mendel, Legrand du Saulle, Maudsley, Krafft-Ebing, Savage, Hugues,
Hollander, Tamburini, Bonvecchiato, which, with the lack or
atrophy of the moral or social sense, and of _*apparent_ soundness
of mind, is properly speaking only the essential psychological
condition of the born criminal.
Beyond these morally insane people, who are very rare--for, as
Krafft-Ebing and Lombroso have pointed out, they are found more
frequently in prisons than in mad-houses--there is the unhappily
|
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 Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: Lawless led the way, and they were soon seated in an alehouse,
which, as it was very new, and stood in an exposed and solitary
station, was less crowded than those nearer to the centre of the
port. It was but a shed of timber, much like a blockhouse in the
backwoods of to-day, and was coarsely furnished with a press or
two, a number of naked benches, and boards set upon barrels to play
the part of tables. In the middle, and besieged by half a hundred
violent draughts, a fire of wreck-wood blazed and vomited thick
smoke.
"Ay, now," said Lawless, "here is a shipman's joy - a good fire and
a good stiff cup ashore, with foul weather without and an off-sea
|
