| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: Nineteenth Century: everybody capable of it should read it. Probably
the History of Maria Monk is at the opposite extreme of merit (this is
a guess: I have never read it); but it is certain that a boy let
loose in a library would go for Maria Monk and have no use whatever
for Mr Chamberlain. I should probably have read Maria Monk myself if
I had not had the Arabian Nights and their like to occupy me better.
In art, children, like adults, will find their level if they are left
free to find it, and not restricted to what adults think good for
them. Just at present our young people are going mad over ragtimes,
apparently because syncopated rhythms are new to them. If they had
learnt what can be done with syncopation from Beethoven's third
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: sparkling on the ground as Santa Claus cracked his whip and sped away
out of the Valley into the great world beyond. The roomy sleigh was
packed full with huge sacks of toys, and as the reindeer dashed onward
our jolly old Santa laughed and whistled and sang for very joy. For
in all his merry life this was the one day in the year when he was
happiest--the day he lovingly bestowed the treasures of his workshop
upon the little children.
It would be a busy night for him, he well knew. As he whistled and
shouted and cracked his whip again, he reviewed in mind all the towns
and cities and farmhouses where he was expected, and figured that he
had just enough presents to go around and make every child happy. The
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: most significant personages of the age? Remember, then, that
Cagliostro was no isolated phenomenon; that his success--nay, his
having even conceived the possibility of success in the brain that
lay within that "brass-faced, bull-necked, thick-lipped" head--was
made possible by public opinion. Had Cagliostro lived in our time,
public opinion would have pointed out to him other roads to honour--
on which he would doubtless have fared as well. For when the silly
dace try to be caught and hope to be caught, he is a foolish pike
who cannot gorge them. But the method most easy for a pike-nature
like Cagliostro's, was in the eighteenth century, as it may be in
the latter half of the nineteenth, to trade, in a materialist age,
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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 Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: twice that. We judged that if St. Paul's, St. Peter's,
the Great Pyramid, the Strasburg Cathedral and the Capitol
in Washington were clustered against that wall, a man
sitting on its upper edge could not hang his hat on the top
of any one of them without reaching down three or four
hundred feet--a thing which, of course, no man could do.
To me, that mighty glacier was very beautiful. I did
not imagine that anybody could find fault with it; but I
was mistaken. Harris had been snarling for several days.
He was a rabid Protestant, and he was always saying:
"In the Protestant cantons you never see such poverty
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