| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Who prate that the wages
Of Folly are Death--toast the Fools of all ages!
They have ridden like froth down the whirlpools
of time,
They have jingled their caps in the councils of
state,
They have snared half the wisdom of life in a
rhyme,
And tripped into nothingness grinning at fate--
Ho, brothers mine,
Brim up the glasses with gooseberry wine!
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: horrible; then it became still worse. Margaret near-
ly filled with her weary, ridiculous bulk her little
room, and she remained there most of the time,
although it was sunny and noisy, its one window
giving on a courtyard strung with clothes-lines and
teeming with boisterous life. Camille and Jack went
trolley-riding, and made shift to entertain a little,
merry but questionable people, who gave them
passes to vaudeville and entertained in their turn
until the small hours. Unquestionably these peo-
ple suggested to Jack Desmond the scheme which
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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 The Jolly Corner by Henry James: comforting common fact, some vulgar human note, the passage of a
scavenger or a thief, some night-bird however base. He would have
blessed that sign of life; he would have welcomed positively the
slow approach of his friend the policeman, whom he had hitherto
only sought to avoid, and was not sure that if the patrol had come
into sight he mightn't have felt the impulse to get into relation
with it, to hail it, on some pretext, from his fourth floor.
The pretext that wouldn't have been too silly or too compromising,
the explanation that would have saved his dignity and kept his
name, in such a case, out of the papers, was not definite to him:
he was so occupied with the thought of recording his Discretion -
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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 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: account of the parentage and life of thyself, directed to thy son,
ending in the year 1730, with which there were notes, likewise in
thy writing; a copy of which I inclose, in hopes it may be a means,
if thou continued it up to a later period, that the first and latter
part may be put together; and if it is not yet continued, I hope thee
will not delay it. Life is uncertain, as the preacher tells us;
and what will the world say if kind, humane, and benevolent Ben.
Franklin should leave his friends and the world deprived of so pleasing
and profitable a work; a work which would be useful and entertaining
not only to a few, but to millions? The influence writings under
that class have on the minds of youth is very great, and has nowhere
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
