| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: night -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you
know -- and it struck me as being profound.
And isn't profundity fascinating?
But Papa only glowered and said, "Umph!"
Papa, you know, is an obstructionist.
"Papa," I said to him, "what is stubbornness in
you has become will power in me. You will never
dominate me -- NEVER! You should study heredity;
it's wonderful, simply WONDERFUL!
Papa scowled and said, "Umph!"
But you know, Parents are Doomed.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: numbers slowly, if at all, for centuries. Those terrible laws of
natural selection, which issue in "the survival of the fittest,"
cleared off the less fit, in every generation, principally by
infantile disease, often by wholesale famine and pestilence; and
left, on the whole, only those of the strongest constitutions to
perpetuate a hardy, valiant, and enterprising race.
At last came a sudden and unprecedented change. In the first
years of this century, steam and commerce produced an enormous
increase in the population. Millions of fresh human beings found
employment, married, brought up children who found employment in
their turn, and learnt to live more or less civilised lives. An
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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 Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: allow his horse time to recover breath. He also heaved a sigh of
satisfaction, as he saw again the green, undulating valley of the
Neshaminy, with its dazzling squares of young wheat, its brown
patches of corn-land, its snowy masses of blooming orchard, and the
huge, fountain like jets of weeping willow, half concealing the
gray stone fronts of the farm-houses. He had been absent from home
only six days, but the time seemed almost as long to him as a three
years' cruise to a New Bedford whaleman. The peaceful seclusion
and pastoral beauty of the scene did not consciously appeal to his
senses; but he quietly noted how much the wheat had grown during
his absence, that the oats were up and looking well, that Friend
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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 The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: years of coffee and billiards and Munchener beer, than Peter's
new resolution that night: this poverty adopting poverty, this
youth adopting youth, with the altruistic purpose of saving it
from itself.
And this, mind you, before Peter Byrne had heard Harmony's story
or knew her name, Rosa having called her "The Beautiful One" in
her narrative, and the delicatessen-seller being literal in his
repetition.
Back to "The Beautiful One" went Peter Byrne, and, true to his
new part of protector and guardian, squared his shoulders and
tried to look much older than he really was, and responsible. The
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