| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: PERICLES. [To Lords without.]
Let none disturb us. -- Why should this change of thoughts,
The sad companion, dull-eyed melancholy,
Be my so used a guest as not an hour,
In the day's glorious walk, or peaceful night,
The tomb where grief should sleep, can breed me quiet?
Here pleasures court mine eyes, and mine eyes shun them,
And danger, which I fear'd, is at Antioch,
Whose arm seems far too short to hit me here:
Yet neither pleasure's art can joy my spirits,
Nor yet the other's distance comfort me.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: still less in his understanding of the causes and courses of fate,--
but only as the writer who has given us the broadest view of the
conditions and modes of ordinary thought in modern society, I ask
you next to receive the witness of Walter Scott.
I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of no value, and
though the early romantic poetry is very beautiful, its testimony is
of no weight, other than that of a boy's ideal. But his true works,
studied from Scottish life, bear a true witness; and in the whole
range of these, there are but three men who reach the heroic type
{23}--Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse; of these, one is a
border farmer; another a freebooter; the third a soldier in a bad
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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 McTeague by Frank Norris: flushing. "They don't know how good a dentist you are.
What difference does a diploma make, if you're a first-class
dentist? I guess that's all right. Mac, didn't you ever go
to a dental college?"
"No," answered McTeague, doggedly. "What was the good? I
learned how to operate; wa'n't that enough?"
"Hark," said Trina, suddenly. "Wasn't that the bell of your
office?" They had both heard the jangling of the bell that
McTeague had hung over the door of his "Parlors." The
dentist looked at the kitchen clock.
"That's Vanovitch," said he. "He's a plumber round on
McTeague |
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 Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the palisade, and as Tarzan leaped for a lower branch
and disappeared into the foliage above, precisely after the
manner of Manu, the monkey, there were loud exclamations
of surprise and astonishment. For half an hour they called
to him to return, but as he did not answer them they at
last desisted, and sought the sleeping-mats within their huts.
Tarzan went back into the forest a short distance until
he had found a tree suited to his primitive requirements,
and then, curling himself in a great crotch, he fell
immediately into a deep sleep.
The following morning he dropped into the village street
The Return of Tarzan |
