| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: thousand magazine covers, have been adjectived in reams of
Sunday-supplement stories. Who will picture Lower Fifth Avenue
between five and six, when New York's unsung beauties pour into
the streets from a thousand loft-buildings? Theirs is no mere
empty pink-and-white prettiness. Poverty can make prettiness
almost poignantly lovely, for it works with a scalpel. Your
Twenty-sixth Street beauty has a certain wistful appeal that
your Forty-sixth Street beauty lacks; her very bravado, too,
which falls just short of boldness, adds a final piquant touch.
In the face of the girl who works, whether she be a
spindle-legged errand-girl or a ten-thousand-a-year foreign
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: that there are human beings like ourselves in Caspak have roused
the men to a keen desire for exploration. I sent out one party
last week under Bradley. Ahm, who is now free to go and come as
he wishes, accompanied them. They marched about twenty-five miles
due west, encountering many terrible beasts and reptiles and not
a few manlike creatures whom Ahm sent away. Here is Bradley's
report of the expedition:
Marched fifteen miles the first day, camping on the bank of a
large stream which runs southward. Game was plentiful and we saw
several varieties which we had not before encountered in Caspak.
Just before making camp we were charged by an enormous woolly
The Land that Time Forgot |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: the most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, "I will take
you, at any rate, into the drive."
Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness
and misgiving. It was only a few minutes' walk to where the drive
ran, and they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice
behind them cry, "Take out that arm!"
For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more
loudly and hoarsely,
"Take out that arm!"
It was Melbury's. He had returned sooner than they expected, and
now came up to them. Grace's hand had been withdrawn like
The Woodlanders |
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 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: virile garb, to collect a fund to the support of the widows
and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live
only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance company, which has
promised to bury him decently.
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to
devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most
enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns
to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his
hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to
give it practically his support. If I devote myself to
other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
