| 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: only woman in the cast. It's terrible. I ought to be thankful to
get the part these days. And I was, too. But I didn't know it
would be like this. I'm going crazy. The men in the company are
good kids, but I can't go trailing around after them all day.
Besides, it wouldn't be right. They're all married, except Billy,
who plays the kid, and he's busy writing a vawdeville skit that he
thinks the New York managers are going to fight for when he gets
back home. We were to play Athens, Wisconsin, to-night, but the
house burned down night before last, and that left us with an open
date. When I heard the news you'd have thought I had lost my
mother. It's bad enough having a whole day to kill but when I
Buttered Side Down |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: a non-association pilot, he should be forced to discharge him,
and also pay a fine of five hundred dollars. Several of these
heavy fines were paid before the captains' organization grew
strong enough to exercise full authority over its membership;
but that all ceased, presently. The captains tried to get the pilots
to decree that no member of their corporation should serve under
a non-association captain; but this proposition was declined.
The pilots saw that they would be backed up by the captains and
the underwriters anyhow, and so they wisely refrained from entering
into entangling alliances.
As I have remarked, the pilots' association was now the compactest
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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 Iliad by Homer: Thrasydemus, the brave squire of Sarpedon, in the lower part of
the belly, and killed him. Sarpedon then aimed a spear at
Patroclus and missed him, but he struck the horse Pedasus in the
right shoulder, and it screamed aloud as it lay, groaning in the
dust until the life went out of it. The other two horses began to
plunge; the pole of the chariot cracked and they got entangled in
the reins through the fall of the horse that was yoked along with
them; but Automedon knew what to do; without the loss of a moment
he drew the keen blade that hung by his sturdy thigh and cut the
third horse adrift; whereon the other two righted themselves, and
pulling hard at the reins again went together into battle.
The Iliad |
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 Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: hand on Mrs. Otis's forehead, while he hissed into her trembling
husband's ear the awful secrets of the charnel-house. With regard
to little Virginia, he had not quite made up his mind. She had
never insulted him in any way, and was pretty and gentle. A few
hollow groans from the wardrobe, he thought, would be more than
sufficient, or, if that failed to wake her, he might grabble at the
counterpane with palsy-twitching fingers. As for the twins, he was
quite determined to teach them a lesson. The first thing to be
done was, of course, to sit upon their chests, so as to produce the
stifling sensation of nightmare. Then, as their beds were quite
close to each other, to stand between them in the form of a green,
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