| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: request of her lover, sat for a miniature portrait to Mrs.
Gregory, which miniature, set in a gold medallion, Mainwaring,
with a mild, sentimental pleasure, wore hung around his neck and
beneath his shirt frill next his heart.
In the month of April of the year 1820 Mainwaring received orders
to report at Washington. During the preceding autumn the West
India pirates, and notably Capt. Jack Scarfield, had been more
than usually active, and the loss of the packet Marblehead
(which, sailing from Charleston, South Carolina, was never heard
of more) was attributed to them. Two other coasting vessels off
the coast of Georgia had been looted and burned by Scarfield, and
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: to the short-sighted, and while their leaders may have all the
inexperience of old age, their young men are far too wise to be
ever sensible. Yet they will insist on treating painting as if it
were a mode of autobiography invented for the use of the
illiterate, and are always prating to us on their coarse gritty
canvases of their unnecessary selves and their unnecessary
opinions, and spoiling by a vulgar over-emphasis that fine contempt
of nature which is the best and only modest thing about them. One
tires, at the end, of the work of individuals whose individuality
is always noisy, and generally uninteresting. There is far more to
be said in favour of that newer school at Paris, the ARCHAICISTES,
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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 Parmenides by Plato: consider the difficulty in reference to visible objects, but only in
relation to ideas.' 'Yes; because I think that in visible objects you may
easily show any number of inconsistent consequences.' 'Yes; and you should
consider, not only the consequences which follow from a given hypothesis,
but the consequences also which follow from the denial of the hypothesis.
For example, what follows from the assumption of the existence of the many,
and the counter-argument of what follows from the denial of the existence
of the many: and similarly of likeness and unlikeness, motion, rest,
generation, corruption, being and not being. And the consequences must
include consequences to the things supposed and to other things, in
themselves and in relation to one another, to individuals whom you select,
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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 Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Barney was positive. However, it would do no harm to ex-
amine its mate which resembled it in minutest detail.
Almost indifferently Barney turned his attention to the
other panel. He ran his fingers over it, his eyes following
them. What was that? A finger-print? Upon the left side half
way up a tiny smudge was visible. Barney examined it
more carefully. A round, white figure of the conventional
design that was burned into the tile bore the telltale smudge.
Otherwise it differed apparently in no way from the
numerous other round, white figures that were repeated
many times in the scheme of decoration. Barney placed his
The Mad King |
