| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: different."
"Dear lady," said the blue-eyed man, "it would make no
difference to your own people. I know they would be happy to see
you, hair and all. One's own people----"
"My folks? That's just it. If the Prodigal Son had been a
daughter they'd probably have handed her one of her sister's mother
hubbards, and put her to work washing dishes in the kitchen. You
see, after Ma died my brother married, and I went to live with him
and Lil. I was an ugly little mug, and it looked all to the
Cinderella for me, with the coach, and four, and prince left out.
Lil was the village beauty when my brother married her, and she
Buttered Side Down |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: being younger, or that I might be able to love some one else if I
were free; but because you are a difficult person, an egoist, and
hate every one."
"Perhaps so. I don't know," I said.
"Please go away. You want to go on at me till the morning, but I
warn you I am quite worn out and cannot answer you. You promised
me to go to town. I am very grateful; I ask nothing more."
My wife wanted me to go away, but it was not easy for me to do
that. I was dispirited and I dreaded the big, cheerless, chill
rooms that I was so weary of. Sometimes when I had an ache or a
pain as a child, I used to huddle up to my mother or my nurse,
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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 Lucile by Owen Meredith: Because what we feel in our bosoms, in truth,
Is novel to us--that 'tis novel to earth,
And will prove the exception, in durance and worth,
To the great law to which all on earth must incline.
The error was noble, the vanity fine!
Shall we blame it because we survive it? ah, no;
'Twas the youth of our youth, my lord, is it not so?"
XII.
Lord Alfred was mute. He remember'd her yet
A child--the weak sport of each moment's regret,
Blindly yielding herself to the errors of life,
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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 Lucile by Owen Meredith: What earth needs from earth's lowest creature? No life
Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife
And all life not be purer and stronger thereby.
The spirits of just men made perfect on high,
The army of martyrs who stand by the Throne
And gaze into the face that makes glorious their own,
Know this, surely, at last. Honest love, honest sorrow,
Honest work for the day, honest hope for the morrow,
Are these worth nothing more than the hand they make weary,
The heart they have sadden'd, the life they leave dreary?
Hush! the sevenhold heavens to the voice of the Spirit
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