| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Egotism itself, which
is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is entirely the
result of indoor life. Out of doors one becomes abstract and
impersonal. One's individuality absolutely leaves one. And then
Nature is so indifferent, so unappreciative. Whenever I am walking
in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the
cattle that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the
ditch. Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates Mind.
Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die
of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in
England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it
will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice
of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent
among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to
avoid the expence than the shame, which would move tears and pity
in the most savage and inhuman breast.
The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one
million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two
hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which
number I subtract thirty thousand couple, who are able to
maintain their own children, (although I apprehend there cannot
A Modest Proposal |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: business for himself. He might have won fame and fortune as a
private detective. But he's gone on plodding along as a police
subordinate, and letting the department get all the credit for his
most brilliant achievements. It's a sort of incorrigible humbleness
of nature - and then, you know, he had the misfortune to be unjustly
sentenced to a term in prison in his early youth."
"No, I did not know that."
"The stigma stuck to his name, and finally drove him to take up
this work. I don't think Muller realised, when he began, just
how greatly he is gifted. I don't know that he really knows now.
He seems to do it because he likes it - he's a queer sort of man."
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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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: groups do congregate, it is wonderfully amusing. Then, too,
there is a ball in every available hall, a delirious ball, where
one may dance all day for ten cents; dance and grow mad for joy,
and never know who were your companions, and be yourself unknown.
And in the exhilaration of the day, one walks miles and miles,
and dances and skips, and the fatigue is never felt.
In Washington Square, away down where Royal Street empties its
stream of children great and small into the broad channel of
Elysian Fields Avenue, there was a perfect Indian pow-wow. With
a little imagination one might have willed away the vision of the
surrounding houses, and fancied one's self again in the forest,
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
