| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: in using all the oil in sight and calling for more.
That was Jo--a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric,
roving- eyed, and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of
a youth that had long slipped past him. Jo Hertz, in one of
those pinch-waist suits and a belted coat and a little green hat,
walking up Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying
to take the curb with a jaunty youthfulness against which every
one of his fat-encased muscles rebelled, was a sight for mirth or
pity, depending on one's vision.
The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life of Jo Hertz.
He had been a quite different sort of canine. The staid and
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon:
Unlook'd, on diest unless thou get a son.
VIII
Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
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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 God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: It is probable that in very few cases is the retention of stipend or
incumbency a conscious dishonesty. At the worst it is mitigated by
thought for wife or child. It has only been during very exceptional
phases of religious development and controversy that beliefs have
been really sharp. A creed, like a coin, it may be argued, loses
little in practical value because it is worn, or bears the image of
a vanished king. The religious life is a reality that has clothed
itself in many garments, and the concern of the priest or minister
is with the religious life and not with the poor symbols that may
indeed pretend to express, but do as a matter of fact no more than
indicate, its direction. It is quite possible to maintain that the
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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 The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes,
And the long fall wind on the lake.
Octaves
I
To get at the eternal strength of things,
And fearlessly to make strong songs of it,
Is, to my mind, the mission of that man
The world would call a poet. He may sing
But roughly, and withal ungraciously;
But if he touch to life the one right chord
Wherein God's music slumbers, and awake
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