| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey: Burt was the first man up. He stood left-handed
at the plate and looked formidable. Duveen, the
wary old pitcher for New York, to whom this new
player was an unknown quantity, eyed his easy
position as if reckoning on a possible weakness.
Then he took his swing and threw the ball. Burt
never moved a muscle and the umpire called strike.
The next was a ball, the next a strike; still Burt
had not moved.
``Somebody wake him up!'' yelled a wag in the
bleachers. ``He's from Slumbertown, all right, all
The Redheaded Outfield |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: half-ripe mealies. Then I went on till I came to the kraal. Some of my
people were seated outside of a hut, talking together over a fire. I
crept near, silently as a snake, and hid behind a little bush. I knew
that they could not see me outside the ring of the firelight, and I
wanted to hear what they said. As I guessed, they were talking of me
and called me many names. They said that I should bring ill-luck on
the tribe by having killed so great a witch-doctor as Noma; also that
the people of the headman would demand payment for the assault on him.
I learned, moreover, that my father had ordered out all the men of the
tribe to hunt for me on the morrow and to kill me wherever they found
me. "Ah!" I thought, "you may hunt, but you will bring nothing home to
Nada the Lily |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: I was doing; and the spell of her beauty and goodness
was strong upon me, so that I was weak and could not
resist what I had never known before in all my life--
love."
"You could not well be blamed," said Joan de Tany,
generously. "Bertrade de Montfort is all and even more
than you have said; it be a benediction simply to have
known her."
As she spoke, Norman of Torn looked upon her criti-
cally for the first time, and he saw that Joan de Tany
was beautiful, and that when she spoke her face lighted
The Outlaw of Torn |
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 Cratylus by Plato: letters when required, or several letters; and so we shall form syllables,
as they are called, and from syllables make nouns and verbs; and thus, at
last, from the combinations of nouns and verbs arrive at language, large
and fair and whole; and as the painter made a figure, even so shall we make
speech by the art of the namer or the rhetorician, or by some other art.
Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I was carried away--
meaning to say that this was the way in which (not we but) the ancients
formed language, and what they put together we must take to pieces in like
manner, if we are to attain a scientific view of the whole subject, and we
must see whether the primary, and also whether the secondary elements are
rightly given or not, for if they are not, the composition of them, my dear
|
