| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: teach her to drink beer and she shall grow so fat that
the Spalpeens won't know their auntie."
At last--"How much do they pay?" I asked, in
desperation. And the thing that had appeared so absurd
at first began to take on the shape of reality.
Von Gerhard did speak to Norberg of the Post. And
I am to go to Milwaukee next week. The skeleton of the
book manuscript is stowed safely away in the bottom of my
trunk and Norah has filled in the remaining space with
sundry flannels, and hot water bags and medicine flasks,
so that I feel like a schoolgirl on her way to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: this mortal body, in order to work on its account, but also for
all men on earth; nay, he lives only for others, and not for
himself. For it is to this end that he brings his own body into
subjection, that he may be able to serve others more sincerely
and more freely, as Paul says, "None of us liveth to himself, and
no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the
Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord" (Rom. xiv. 7, 8).
Thus it is impossible that he should take his ease in this life,
and not work for the good of his neighbours, since he must needs
speak, act, and converse among men, just as Christ was made in
the likeness of men and found in fashion as a man, and had His
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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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: bottom shelves, little knowing the damage and pain they will cause.
One would fain cry out, calling on the Shade of Horace to pardon
the false quantity--
"Magna movet stomacho fastidia, si puer unctis
Tractavit volumen manibus." _Sat. IV_.
What boys CAN do may be gathered from the following true story,
sent me by a correspondent who was the immediate sufferer:--
One summer day he met in town an acquaintance who for many years had
been abroad; and finding his appetite for old books as keen as ever,
invited him home to have a mental feed upon "fifteeners" and other
bibliographical dainties, preliminary to the coarser pleasures enjoyed
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: voyage; but to shorten my story, shall observe that I came to my
old habitation, the island, on the 10th of April 1695. It was with
no small difficulty that I found the place; for as I came to it and
went to it before on the south and east side of the island, coming
from the Brazils, so now, coming in between the main and the
island, and having no chart for the coast, nor any landmark, I did
not know it when I saw it, or, know whether I saw it or not. We
beat about a great while, and went on shore on several islands in
the mouth of the great river Orinoco, but none for my purpose; only
this I learned by my coasting the shore, that I was under one great
mistake before, viz. that the continent which I thought I saw from
Robinson Crusoe |
