| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: unheroic. As fast as Mimmy makes swords, Siegfried Bakoonin
smashes them, and then takes the poor old swordsmith by the
scruff of the neck and chastises him wrathfully. The particular
day on which the curtain rises begins with one of these trying
domestic incidents. Mimmy has just done his best with a new sword
of surpassing excellence. Siegfried returns home in rare spirits
with a wild bear, to the extreme terror of the wretched dwarf.
When the bear is dismissed, the new sword is produced. It is
promptly smashed, as usual, with, also, the usual effects on the
temper of Siegfried, who is quite boundless in his criticisms of
the smith's boasted skill, and declares that he would smash the
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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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: bringing to the surface and utilising the talents and virtues of all
classes, even to the lowest. We may conceive an aristocracy
choosing out, and gladly receiving into its own ranks as equals,
every youth, every maiden, who was distinguished by intellect,
virtue, valour, beauty, without respect to rank or birth; and
rejecting in turn, from its own ranks, each of its own children who
fell below some lofty standard, and showed by weakliness, dulness,
or baseness, incapacity for the post of guiding and elevating their
fellow-citizens. Thus would arise a true aristocracy; a governing
body of the really most worthy--the most highly organised in body
and in mind--perpetually recruited from below: from which, or from
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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 The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: AUGUST 1831.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE KEEPSAKE.
You have asked me, sir, to point out a subject for the pencil,
and I feel the difficulty of complying with your request,
although I am not certainly unaccustomed to literary composition,
or a total stranger to the stores of history and tradition, which
afford the best copies for the painter's art. But although SICUT
PICTURA POESIS is an ancient and undisputed axiom--although
poetry and painting both address themselves to the same object of
exciting the human imagination, by presenting to it pleasing or
sublime images of ideal scenes--yet the one conveying itself
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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 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: do dat!"
"I will do it. He is a kind man. I will do it or go into the
convent at Charleston."
It was the threat of the convent that finally won the assent of
bewildered and heartstricken Pierre Robillard. He was staunchly
Presbyterian, even though his family were Catholic, and the
thought of his daughter becoming a nun was even worse than that of
her marrying Gerald O'Hara. After all, the man had nothing
against him but a lack of family.
So, Ellen, no longer Robillard, turned her back on Savannah, never
to see it again, and with a middle-aged husband, Mammy, and twenty
Gone With the Wind |
