| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: they talked till midnight.
What Carol said that evening, what she was passionately
thinking, was also emerging in the minds of women in ten
thousand Gopher Prairies. Her formulations were not pat
solutions but visions of a tragic futility. She did not utter
them so compactly that they can be given in her words; they
were roughened with "Well, you see" and "if you get what
I mean" and "I don't know that I'm making myself clear."
But they were definite enough, and indignant enough.
III
In reading popular stories and seeing plays, asserted Carol,
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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 Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: any more than against the priest, but it is an unfortunate
disposition to cultivate in children. There are constant
sallies at the shaved noddle of the priest. They speak of
his head as a gourd, and they class him with the tiger as a
beast of prey.
Some of the rhymes illustrate the disposition of the Chinese to
nickname every one, from the highest official in the empire to
the meanest beggar on the street. One of the great men of the
present dynasty, a prime minister and intimate friend of the
emperor, goes by the name of Humpbacked Liu. Another may be
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