| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: greatly. Later on, the men as a further token of their good will
clubbed together and gave me a gold watch. This gave me greater
joy, no doubt, than Napoleon felt when, with his own hand, he
placed a gold crown upon his head.
When it came time to qualify and be sworn into office I found
trouble. The Republican boss was disgruntled because only one
Republican was elected while the Democrats got everything else.
He wanted me to give up the office. "Let the tail go with the
hide," he said. "Let 'em have it all." His idea was to give the
Democrats a closed family circle, so that when temptation came
along, they would feel safe in falling for it. He feared that a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: his eyes, and the way his hair was mussed.
"Why, you're only a kid!" whispered the Kid Next Door, in
surprise.
Gertie smothered a laugh. "You're not the first man that's
been deceived by a pig-tail braid and a baby blue waist. I could
locate those two gray hairs for you with my eyes shut and my feet
in a sack. Come on, boy. These Robert W. Chambers situations make
me nervous."
Many earnest young writers with a flow of adjectives and a
passion for detail have attempted to describe the quiet of a great
city at night, when a few million people within it are sleeping, or
Buttered Side Down |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: their crimes that the home governments, stirred at last by these
outrageous barbarities, seriously undertook the suppression of
the freebooters, lopping and trimming the main trunk until its
members were scattered hither and thither, and it was thought
that the organization was exterminated. But, so far from being
exterminated, the individual members were merely scattered north,
south, east, and west, each forming a nucleus around which
gathered and clustered the very worst of the offscouring of
humanity.
The result was that when the seventeenth century was fairly
packed away with its lavender in the store chest of the past, a
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
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 Menexenus by Plato: to be given to them, as is meet and by law ordained. For noble words are a
memorial and a crown of noble actions, which are given to the doers of them
by the hearers. A word is needed which will duly praise the dead and
gently admonish the living, exhorting the brethren and descendants of the
departed to imitate their virtue, and consoling their fathers and mothers
and the survivors, if any, who may chance to be alive of the previous
generation. What sort of a word will this be, and how shall we rightly
begin the praises of these brave men? In their life they rejoiced their
own friends with their valour, and their death they gave in exchange for
the salvation of the living. And I think that we should praise them in the
order in which nature made them good, for they were good because they were
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