| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: bully you. My name's Blackie. I'm goin' t' like you.
Come on over t' my sanctum once in a while and I'll show
you my scrapbook and let you play with the office
revolver."
And so it happened that I had not been in Milwaukee
a month before Blackie and I were friends.
Norah was horrified. My letters were full of him.
I told her that she might get a more complete mental
picture of him if she knew that he wore the pinkest
shirts, and the purplest neckties, and the blackest and
whitest of black-and-white checked vests that ever
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: processes of division; and of division there are two kinds,--one in which
like is divided from like, and another in which the good is separated from
the bad. The latter of the two is termed purification; and again, of
purification, there are two sorts,--of animate bodies (which may be
internal or external), and of inanimate. Medicine and gymnastic are the
internal purifications of the animate, and bathing the external; and of the
inanimate, fulling and cleaning and other humble processes, some of which
have ludicrous names. Not that dialectic is a respecter of names or
persons, or a despiser of humble occupations; nor does she think much of
the greater or less benefits conferred by them. For her aim is knowledge;
she wants to know how the arts are related to one another, and would quite
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Or Lamech, out of ages lost, --
Or, more than all, Melchizedek.
Assured that he was none of these,
I gave them back their names again,
To scan once more those endless eyes
Where all my questions ended then.
I found in them what they revealed
That I shall not live to forget,
And wondered if they found in mine
Compassion that I might regret.
Pity, I learned, was not the least
|
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 Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: through his bones like snow, and the wind whistled in his teeth,
and the boat dipped not with the weight of him.
"I am fearful to see you, my son," said the man. " For methinks
you are no thing of God."
"It is only the wind that whistles in my teeth," said the Poor
Thing, "and there is no life in me to keep it out."
So they came to the little isle of sheep, where the surf burst all
about it in the midst of the sea, and it was all green with
bracken, and all wet with dew, and the moon enlightened it. They
ran the boat into a cove, and set foot to land; and the man came
heavily behind among the rocks in the deepness of the bracken, but
|
