| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: This remark being purely spiteful, I ignored it and sat down to my
book, which concerned the stealing of some famous Emerelds, the
heroine being a girl detective who could shoot the cork out of a
bottle at a great distance, and whose name was Barbara!
It was for that reason Jane had loaned me the book.
I had reached the place where the Duchess wore the Emerelds to a
ball, above white satin and lillies, the girl detective being
dressed as a man and driving her there, because the Duchess had
been warned and hautily refused to wear the paste copies she
had--when Sis said, peavishly:
"Why don't you knit or do somthing useful, Bab?"
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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 Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: looked over the iron heads and the deer-sinew fastenings of
his harpoon and his seal-lance and his bird-dart. There was
nothing else to do.
"We shall go to Sedna soon--very soon," the girl whispered.
"In three days we shall lie down and go. Will your tornaq do
nothing? Sing her an angekok's song to make her come here."
He began to sing in the high-pitched howl of the magic songs,
and the gale went down slowly. In the middle of his song the
girl started, laid her mittened hand and then her head to the
ice floor of the hut. Kotuko followed her example, and the two
kneeled, staring into each other's eyes, and listening with
The Second Jungle Book |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: don't believe the P. and S. W. intends to sell for two-fifty an
acre, at all. The managers of the road want the best price they
can get for everything in these hard times."
"Times aren't ever very hard for the railroad," hazards old
Broderson.
Broderson was the oldest man in the room. He was about sixty-
five years of age, venerable, with a white beard, his figure bent
earthwards with hard work.
He was a narrow-minded man, painfully conscientious in his
statements lest he should be unjust to somebody; a slow thinker,
unable to let a subject drop when once he had started upon it.
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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 The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: of no artistic value whatsoever.
Perhaps, however, I have wronged the public in limiting them to
such words as 'immoral,' 'unintelligible,' 'exotic,' and
'unhealthy.' There is one other word that they use. That word is
'morbid.' They do not use it often. The meaning of the word is so
simple that they are afraid of using it. Still, they use it
sometimes, and, now and then, one comes across it in popular
newspapers. It is, of course, a ridiculous word to apply to a work
of art. For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a mode of
thought that one cannot express? The public are all morbid,
because the public can never find expression for anything. The
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