| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: packing crates, or descended into places sinister
like cellars. We got in, we drove on, we got out
again for the sole purpose, as it seemed, of looking
behind a heap of rubble. The sun declined; my
companion was curt and sardonic in his answers,
but it appears we were just missing Johnson all
along. At last our conveyance stopped once more
with a jerk, and the driver jumping down opened
the door.
A black mudhole blocked the lane. A mound of
garbage crowned with the dead body of a dog ar-
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: a grain of truth in it likewise. Vesalius's religion must have sat
very lightly on him. The man who had robbed churchyards and gibbets
from his youth was not likely to be much afraid of apparitions and
demons. He had handled too many human bones to care much for those
of saints. He was probably, like his friends of Basle, Montpellier,
and Paris, somewhat of a heretic at heart, probably somewhat of a
pagan, while his lady, Anne van Hamme, was probably a strict
Catholic, as her father, being a councillor and master of the
exchequer at Brussels, was bound to be; and freethinking in the
husband, crossed by superstition in the wife, may have caused in
them that wretched vie e part, that want of any true communion of
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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 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: "The Bohemians, you know, were tree wor-
shipers before the missionaries came. Father
says the people in the mountains still do queer
things, sometimes,--they believe that trees
bring good or bad luck."
Emil looked superior. "Do they? Well,
which are the lucky trees? I'd like to know."
"I don't know all of them, but I know
lindens are. The old people in the mountains
O Pioneers! |
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 Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: "Why, Fothy," I said, "if I lived a hundred years
I never could make two lines rhyme with each
other!"
But he said Rhyme was out of fashion anyhow,
and -- would you believe it? -- while we were talking
I got an idea for a poem and just dashed it off
then and there -- a vers libre poem you know, and it
goes:
What becomes of
People when they die?
I used to ask when I was a little child,
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