| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: that, I expect you not to be surprised at anything I say.
I've done such a mass of private thinking about you in the
last ten years that I'm likely to forget I've scarcely seen
you in that time. Just remember, will you, that like the
girl in the sob song, `You made me what I am to-day?'"
"I! You're being humorous again."
"Never less so in my life. Listen, Fan. That cowardly,
sickly little boy you fought for in the street, that day in
Winnebago, showed every sign of growing up a cowardly,
sickly man. You're the real reason for his not doing so.
Now, wait a minute. I was an impressionable little kid, I
Fanny Herself |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: in Calcutta. The paragraph in which the journal dismissed poor Fry
to his reward was not unkind, but it distinctly implied that the
removal of Fry should include the removal of his ideas and methods,
and the substitution of something rather more up to date. It
remarked that the Bengali student had been pinned down long enough
to drawing plaster casts, and declared that something should be done
to awake within him the creative idea. I remember the phrase, it
seemed so directly to suggest that the person to awake it should be
Ingersoll Armour.
I turned the matter over in my mind; indeed, for the best part of an
hour my brain revolved with little else. The billet was an
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