| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: from kissing her, for he was a thorough soldier.."
Here the girl stirred, opened her eyes, saw me, and sat up.
"Who on earth- " she began. "It's all right," said I. "It's
only a fairy tale. Besides, I'm not a soldier, although I don't
see- "
"How long has this been going on?"
"Only just begun," said I." Listen.
"Then the dog ran back with the Princess. But when morning came-
"
"Where's Roy?"
"He had to go and join his friends," said I. " Fortunately I
The Brother of Daphne |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: they declaimed passionately, women with olive, swarthy
skins, bright eyes, and teeth of ivory, with revolvers at
their waists, cartridge-belts across their breasts, and broad
Mexican hats on their heads, wove their way like stray
street curs in and out among groups. A vulgar wench,
with rouged cheeks and dark brown arms and neck,
gave a great leap and landed on the bar near Demetrio's
table.
He turned his head toward her and literally collided
with a pair of lubric eyes under a narrow forehead and
thick, straight hair, parted in the middle.
The Underdogs |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: kind would have been no good for our iron-clad ancestors. When a
knight in iron clothes tried to whip a leather-clad peasant, the
peasant could have cracked him with a stone and his clothes would
have fallen off like plaster from the ceiling. So those early
iron workers learned to puddle forge iron and make it into
wrought iron which is tough and leathery and can not be broken by
a blow. This process was handed down from father to son, and in
the course of time came to my father and so to me. None of us
ever went to school and learned the chemistry of it from books.
We learned the trick by doing it, standing with our faces in the
scorching heat while our hands puddled the metal in its glaring
|
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 Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: performance, it either walked off the stage, or the stick was
fastened in such a way as to leave it in a position conducive
to the amusement of the crowd. These were puppet shows, and were
put through entire performances or plays, the manager doing the
talking as in Punch and Judy.
After the performance several of the students passed around the
hat, each person present giving one-fifth or one-tenth of a cent.
As I came from school one afternoon, the children had called in
from the street a showman with a number of trained mice. He had
|
