| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: water, whistling the while with a shrill abandon that had announced
his presence to Mary Louise.
"Oh, Charlie!" called Mary Louise. "Charlee! Can you come
here just a minute?"
"You bet!" answered Charlie, with the accent on the you; and
came.
"Charlie, is there a back yard, or something, where the sun
is, you know--some nice, grassy place where I can sit, and dry my
hair, and let the breezes blow it?"
"Back yard!" grinned Charlie. "I guess you're new to N' York,
all right, with ground costin' a million or so a foot. Not much
Buttered Side Down |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Rheingold and The Valkyrie instead of the operatic anachronism it
actually is.
But, as a matter of fact, Siegfried did not succeed and Bismarck
did. Roeckel was a prisoner whose mposonment made no difference;
Bakoonin broke up, not Walhall, but the International, which
ended in an undignified quarrel between him and Karl Marx. The
Siegfrieds of 1848 were hopeless political failures, whereas the
Wotans and Alberics and Lows were conspicuous political
successes. Even the Mimes held their own as against Siegfried.
With the single exception of Ferdinand Lassalle, there was no
revolutionary leader who was not an obvious impossibilist in
|
