| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: 'voluntarily' applies to himself. For he was under the impression that a
good man might often compel himself to love and praise another, and to be
the friend and approver of another; and that there might be an involuntary
love, such as a man might feel to an unnatural father or mother, or
country, or the like. Now bad men, when their parents or country have any
defects, look on them with malignant joy, and find fault with them and
expose and denounce them to others, under the idea that the rest of mankind
will be less likely to take themselves to task and accuse them of neglect;
and they blame their defects far more than they deserve, in order that the
odium which is necessarily incurred by them may be increased: but the good
man dissembles his feelings, and constrains himself to praise them; and if
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: How important that card was to become he did not dream, yet he
decided that it was a pretty good card. In turn, he doubted.
Maybe it was a trick of Luck to bring calamity and disaster upon
him. Suppose Dede wouldn't have him, and suppose he went on
loving her more and more, harder and harder? All his old
generalized terrors of love revived. He remembered the
disastrous love affairs of men and women he had known in the
past. There was Bertha Doolittle, old Doolittle's daughter, who
had been madly in love with Dartworthy, the rich Bonanza fraction
owner; and Dartworthy, in turn, not loving Bertha at all, but
madly loving Colonel Walthstone's wife and eloping down the Yukon
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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 Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: drama made a deep impression on the privileged
few who read it, and some mention of it appeared
in the newspapers.
Shortly afterwards a young man came to see
Tolstoy in private. He begged him to refrain
from publishing "The Man who was dead," as it
was the history of his mother's life, and would dis-
tress her gravely, besides possibly occasioning
further police intervention. Tolstoy promptly
consented, and the play remained, as it now ap-
pears, in an unfinished condition. He had al-
The Forged Coupon |
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 Heart of the West by O. Henry: judge, that girl enjoyed it. It was a change for her. It gave her a
different point of view. She laughed and talked, and the kindler made
a dim light compared to her eyes. I had a pocketful of cigars, and as
far as I was concerned there had never been any fall of man. We were
at the same old stand in the Garden of Eden. Out there somewhere in
the rain and the dark was the river of Zion, and the angel with the
flaming sword had not yet put up the keep-off-the-grass sign. I opened
up a gross or two of the Brazilians and made Mame put them on--rings,
brooches, necklaces, eardrops, bracelets, girdles, and lockets. She
flashed and sparkled like a million-dollar princess until she had pink
spots in her cheeks and almost cried for a looking-glass.
Heart of the West |
