| 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: tattooed on the arm. One of the boys scored a hit by slapping his
dime down on the soda fountain marble and bellowing for rum and
salt horse. Some one started to tease the little Morehouse girl
about sailors having sweethearts in every port, but when they saw
the look in her eyes they changed their mind, and stopped. It's
funny how a girl of twenty is a woman, when a man of twenty is a
boy.
Eddie dished out the last of his chocolate ice cream sodas and
cherry phosphates and root beers, while the girls laughingly begged
him to bring them back kimonos from China, and scarves from the
Orient, and Eddie promised, laughing, too, but with a far-off,
Buttered Side Down |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: which is suddenly perceived to be the expression of an inner and
unsuspected beauty, of that something unique and only its own which
rouses a passion of wonder and fidelity and an unappeasable memory
of its charm. The hull of the Ferndale, swung head to the eastward,
caught the light, her tall spars and rigging steeped in a bath of
red-gold, from the water-line full of glitter to the trucks slight
and gleaming against the delicate expanse of the blue.
"Time we had a mouthful to eat," said a voice at his side. It was
Mr. Franklin, the chief mate, with his head sunk between his
shoulders, and melancholy eyes. "Let the men have their breakfast,
bo'sun," he went on, "and have the fire out in the galley in half an
Chance |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: thing cannot exist are not necessarily useful to it. Otherwise ignorance
would appear useful for knowledge, disease for health, and vice for virtue.
Critias still showed great reluctance to accept any argument which went to
prove that all these things were useless. I saw that it was as difficult
to persuade him as (according to the proverb) it is to boil a stone, so I
said: Let us bid 'good-bye' to the discussion, since we cannot agree
whether these things are useful and a part of wealth or not. But what
shall we say to another question: Which is the happier and better man,--he
who requires the greatest quantity of necessaries for body and diet, or he
who requires only the fewest and least? The answer will perhaps become
more obvious if we suppose some one, comparing the man himself at different
|
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 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: of the papers, like yourself and Ferrenby, the younger
professors.... The illiterate athletes like Langueduc think he's
getting eccentric, but they just say, 'Good old Burne has got
some queer ideas in his head,' and pass onthe Pharisee classGee!
they ridicule him unmercifully."
The next morning he met Burne hurrying along McCosh walk after a
recitation.
"Whither bound, Tsar?"
"Over to the Prince office to see Ferrenby," he waved a copy of
the morning's Princetonian at Amory. "He wrote this editorial."
"Going to flay him alive?"
This Side of Paradise |
