| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: The ouzel's haunt, the wild bee's pasturage,
For round its rim great creamy lilies float
Through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage,
Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat
Steered by a dragon-fly, - be not afraid
To leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place was made
For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen,
One arm around her boyish paramour,
Strays often there at eve, and I have seen
The moon strip off her misty vestiture
For young Endymion's eyes; be not afraid,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: thought. "You just bet I'm going. Right now!" And Terry went.
She went for much the same reason as that given by the ladye of
high degree in the old English song--she who had left her lord
and bed and board to go with the raggle-taggle gipsies-O! The
thing that was sending Terry Platt away was much more than a
conjugal quarrel precipitated by a soft-boiled egg and a flap of
the arm. It went so deep that it is necessary to delve back to
the days when Theresa Platt was Terry Sheehan to get the real
significance of it, and of the things she did after she went.
When Mrs. Orville Platt had been Terry Sheehan, she had played
the piano, afternoons and evenings, in the orchestra of the Bijou
One Basket |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: measure, to protect the oppressed and to defend the truth.
So kindly is the world arranged, such great profit may arise
from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such,
in particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing,
that it should combine pleasure and profit to both parties,
and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and useful, like
good preaching.
This is to speak of literature at its highest; and with the
four great elders who are still spared to our respect and
admiration, with Carlyle, Ruskin, Browning, and Tennyson
before us, it would be cowardly to consider it at first in
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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 A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: listened to by Brandeis and Tamasese "with the greatest attention."
Brandeis, when it was done, desired his thanks to the admiral for
the moderate terms of his message, and, as Kane went to his boat,
repeated the expression of his gratitude as though he meant it,
declaring his own hands would be thus strengthened for the
maintenance of discipline. But I have yet to learn of any
gratitude on the part of Tamasese. Consider the case of the poor
owlish man hearing for the first time our diplomatic commonplaces.
The admiral would not be answerable for the consequences. Think of
it! A devil of a position for a DE FACTO king. And here, the same
afternoon, was Leary in the Scalon house, mopping it out for
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