| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: a surprising sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards had been a
claimant for the sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that
fact and then maliciously betrayed it.
Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it. And he said it
was not fair to attach weight to the chatter of a sick old man who
was out of his mind. Still, suspicion was in the air, and there was
much talk.
After a day or two it was reported that Mrs. Richards's delirious
deliveries were getting to be duplicates of her husband's.
Suspicion flamed up into conviction, now, and the town's pride in
the purity of its one undiscredited important citizen began to dim
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: certainly warranted by the state of my clothes, by my youth and
my expression, all singularly at variance; there was all the
disdain of the adored mistress, in whose eyes all men save one
are as nothing; there were involuntary tremors and alarms; and,
above all, the thought that it was tiresome to have an unexpected
guest just now, when, no doubt, she had been scheming to enjoy
full solitude for her love. This mute eloquence I understood in
her eyes, and all the pity and compassion in me made answer in a
sad smile. I thought of her, as I had seen her for one moment, in
the pride of her beauty; standing in the sunny afternoon in the
narrow alley with the flowers on either hand; and as that fair
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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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: trees of Aranhal, where he had been born. The wind was blowing through
them, and in their branches he could hear the nightingales. "Empty!
Empty!" he said, aloud. And he lay for two days and nights hearing the
wind and the nightingales in the far trees of Aranhal. But Felipe,
watching, only heard the Padre crying through the hours, "Empty! Empty!"
Then the wind in the trees died down, and the Padre could get out of bed,
and soon be in the garden. But the voices within him still talked all the
while as he sat watching the sails when they passed between the
headlands. Their words, falling for ever the same way, beat his spirit
sore, like blows upon flesh already bruised. If he could only change what
they said, he would rest.
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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 Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: performance, to harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce
ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the
whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it
was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and
sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused
revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a
light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked
at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly,
and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming
of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then,
after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and
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