| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: there ain't any titles. Do you know what a prince of the blood is,
on earth?"
"No."
"Well, a prince of the blood don't belong to the royal family
exactly, and he don't belong to the mere nobility of the kingdom;
he is lower than the one, and higher than t'other. That's about
the position of the patriarchs and prophets here. There's some
mighty high nobility here - people that you and I ain't worthy to
polish sandals for - and THEY ain't worthy to polish sandals for
the patriarchs and prophets. That gives you a kind of an idea of
their rank, don't it? You begin to see how high up they are, don't
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "So
Walter Arensberg,
Alfred Kreymborg,
Carl Sandburg,
Louis Untermeyer,
Eunice Tietjens,
Clara Shanafelt,
James Oppenheim,
Maxwell Bodenheim,
Richard Glaenzer,
Scharmel Iris,
This Side of Paradise |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: very deliberate, was the last to appear, and to his request for an
afternoon sermon there was nothing left to offer but the services
of the young probationer in theology. I could see that it struck
him as a perilous adventure. Questions about "the fundamentals"
glinted in his watery eye. He crossed and uncrossed his legs with
solemnity, and blew his nose so frequently in a huge red silk
handkerchief that it seemed like a signal of danger. At last he
unburdened himself of his hesitations.
"Ah'm not saying that the young man will not be orthodox--ahem!
But ye know, sir, in the Kirk, we are not using hymns, but just the
pure Psawms of Daffit, in the meetrical fairsion. And ye know,
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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 Options by O. Henry: 0. There doesn't seem to be any other reason in the book for their
being here.
"Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home, as I said, and
finds out who she is. He meets here on the corso or the strasse one
evening and gives us ten pages of conversation. She reminds him of
the difference in their stations, and that gives him a chance to ring
in three solid pages about America's uncrowned sovereigns. If you'd
take his remarks and set 'em to music, and then take the music away
from 'em, they'd sound exactly like one of George Cohan's songs.
"Well, you know how it runs on, if you ve read any of 'em--he slaps
the king's Swiss body-guards around like everything whenever they get
Options |
