| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: lost in the year 1894 alone. The crowd, however, was never for a
moment concerned by these successive losses, much more important
though they were as far as regards the destruction of life and
property, than the loss of the Atlantic liner in question could
possibly have been.
It is not, then, the facts in themselves that strike the popular
imagination, but the way in which they take place and are brought
under notice. It is necessary that by their condensation, if I
may thus express myself, they should produce a startling image
which fills and besets the mind. To know the art of impressing
the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: nutriment within?--might it not be that something of the dead
heart had risen to purple and emerald life--in the sap of
translucent leaves, in the wine of the savage berries,--to blend
with the blood of the Wizard Singer,--to lend a strange sweetness
to the melody of his wooing? ...
... Seldom, indeed, does it happen that a man in the prime of
youth, in the possession of wealth, habituated to comforts and
the elegances of life, discovers in one brief week how minute his
true relation to the human aggregate,---how insignificant his
part as one living atom of the social organism. Seldom, at the
age of twenty-eight, has one been made able to comprehend,
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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 Little Britain by Washington Irving: together, and to look down with sovereign contempt upon
their leathern-bottomed neighbors: as I have seen decayed
gentry carry a high head among the plebeian society with which
they were reduced to associate. The whole front of my sitting-
room is taken up with a bow-window, on the panes of which
are recorded the names of previous occupants for many
generations, mingled with scraps of very indifferent
gentlemanlike poetry, written in characters which I can scarcely
decipher, and which extol the charms of many a beauty of
Little Britain who has long, long since bloomed, faded, and
passed away. As I am an idle personage, with no apparent
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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 Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: go right after them, and see if we can't wipe out the
Shoshone-Teton outfit."
"How? They own the law, don't they?"
"They don't own the United States Government. When they held up a
mail-train they did a fool thing, for they bucked up against
Uncle Sam. What I propose is that we get hold of one of the gang
and make him weaken. Then, after we have got hold of some
evidence that will convict, we'll go out and run down my namesake
Ned Bannister. If people once get the idea that his hold isn't so
strong there's a hundred people that will testify against him.
We'll have him in a Government prison inside of six months."
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