| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: awful to think such things--but . . . Lord, how we are made--how
strangely we are made!"
She turned the light low, and slipped stealthily over and knelt down
by the sack and felt of its ridgy sides with her hands, and fondled
them lovingly; and there was a gloating light in her poor old eyes.
She fell into fits of absence; and came half out of them at times to
mutter "If we had only waited!--oh, if we had only waited a little,
and not been in such a hurry!"
Meantime Cox had gone home from his office and told his wife all
about the strange thing that had happened, and they had talked it
over eagerly, and guessed that the late Goodson was the only man in
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: for himself. Not him. It was Judson Tate. Benavides was only the chip
over the bug. I gave him the tip when to declare war and increase
import duties and wear his state trousers. But that wasn't what I
wanted to tell you. How did I get to be It? I'll tell you. Because I'm
the most gifted talker that ever made vocal sounds since Adam first
opened his eyes, pushed aside the smelling-salts, and asked: 'Where am
I?'
"As you observe, I am about the ugliest man you ever saw outside the
gallery of photographs of the New England early Christian Scientists.
So, at an early age, I perceived that what I lacked in looks I must
make up in eloquence. That I've done. I get what I go after. As the
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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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Silver-grey is the early snow to-day on thy summit,
Through the tempestuous night streaming fast over thy brow.
Youth, alas, throughout life as closely to age is united
As, in some changeable dream, yesterday blends with to-day.
Uri, October 7th, 1797.
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DISTICHS.
CHORDS are touch'd by Apollo,--the death-laden bow, too, he bendeth;
While he the shepherdess charms, Python he lays in the dust.
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WHAT is merciful censure? To make thy faults appear smaller?
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: every direction. But the fact is that it resembles the wax of black
sealing-wax, which surrounds and insulates the particles of
conducting carbon, interspersed throughout its mass. In the case of
shell-lac, therefore, space is an insulator.
But now, take the case of a conducting metal. Here we have, as
before, the swathing of space round every atom. If space be an
insulator there can be no transmission of electricity from atom to
atom. But there is transmission; hence space is a conductor. Thus
he endeavours to hamper the atomic theory. 'The reasoning,' he says,
'ends in a subversion of that theory altogether; for if space be an
insulator it cannot exist in conducting bodies, and if it be a
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