| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: shepherdess with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep the
bad wolves from the lambs, or a typical Western ranch
girl, with short hair, like the pictures of her in the Sunday
papers? I think the latter. And they'll have my picture,
too, with the wild-cats I've slain, single-handed, hanging
from my saddle horn. 'From the Four Hundred to the
Flocks' is the way they'll headline it, and they'll print
photographs of the old Van Dresser mansion and the
church where I was married. They won't have my
picture, but they'll get an artist to draw it. I'll be wild
and woolly, and I'll grow my own wool."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: to know.
SOCRATES: Then if, as you say, you desire to know, I suppose that you will
be willing to hear, and I may consider myself to be speaking to an auditor
who will remain, and will not run away?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly, let me hear.
SOCRATES: You had better be careful, for I may very likely be as unwilling
to end as I have hitherto been to begin.
ALCIBIADES: Proceed, my good man, and I will listen.
SOCRATES: I will proceed; and, although no lover likes to speak with one
who has no feeling of love in him (compare Symp.), I will make an effort,
and tell you what I meant: My love, Alcibiades, which I hardly like to
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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 Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: after all, which of course was more than they deserved. They
alighted on the floor, quite unashamed of themselves, and the
youngest one had already forgotten his home.
"John," he said, looking around him doubtfully, "I think I have
been here before."
"Of course you have, you silly. There is your old bed."
"So it is," Michael said, but not with much conviction.
"I say," cried John, "the kennel!" and he dashed across to look
into it.
"Perhaps Nana is inside it," Wendy said.
But John whistled. "Hullo," he said, "there's a man inside
Peter Pan |
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 Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: pleasures and inseparably associated with all forbidden things.
Eric Hermannson had long been the object of the prayers of the
revivalists. His mother had felt the power of the Spirit weeks
ago, and special prayer-meetings had been held at her house for her
son. But Eric had only gone his ways laughing, the ways of youth,
which are short enough at best, and none too flowery on the Divide.
He slipped away from the prayer-meetings to meet the Campbell boys
in Genereau's saloon, or hug the plump little French girls at
Chevalier's dances, and sometimes, of a summer night, he even went
across the dewy cornfields and through the wild-plum thicket to
play the fiddle for Lena Hanson, whose name was a reproach through
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
