| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: animals, and then the parade, the awful, awful parade, and I
riding through the streets in tights, Jim! Tights!" She covered
her face to shut out the memory. "I couldn't go back to it, Jim!
I just couldn't!" She turned away, her face still hidden in her
hands. He looked at her a long while in silence.
"I didn't know how you'd come to feel about it," he said
doggedly.
"You aren't ANGRY, Jim?" She turned to him anxiously, her eyes
pleading for his forgiveness.
"Angry?" he echoed, almost bitterly. "I guess it couldn't ever
come to that a-tween you an' me. I'll be all right." He
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: stamping his foot, so that armies were dispersed; now by the
woodside on a summer noon trolling on his pipe until he
charmed the hearts of upland ploughmen. And the Greeks, in so
figuring, uttered the last word of human experience. To
certain smoke-dried spirits matter and motion and elastic
aethers, and the hypothesis of this or that other spectacled
professor, tell a speaking story; but for youth and all
ductile and congenial minds, Pan is not dead, but of all the
classic hierarchy alone survives in triumph; goat-footed, with
a gleeful and an angry look, the type of the shaggy world: and
in every wood, if you go with a spirit properly prepared, you
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: writings as an essentially dangerous method, proving either too
much or too little, Plato himself returns to the earlier mode of
attack, and re-writes history with a didactic purpose, laying down
certain ethical canons of historical criticism. God is good; God
is just; God is true; God is without the common passions of men.
These are the tests to which we are to bring the stories of the
Greek religion.
'God predestines no men to ruin, nor sends destruction on innocent
cities; He never walks the earth in strange disguise, nor has to
mourn for the death of any well-beloved son. Away with the tears
for Sarpedon, the lying dream sent to Agamemnon, and the story of
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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 Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: with gray rags.
Demetrio buckled his cartridge belt about his waist
and picked up his rifle. He was tall and well built, with a
sanguine face and beardless chin; he wore shirt and
trousers of white cloth, a broad Mexican hat and leather
sandals.
With slow, measured step, he left the room, vanishing
into the impenetrable darkness of the night.
The dog, excited to the point of madness, had jumped
over the corral fence.
Suddenly a shot rang out. The dog moaned, then
The Underdogs |
