| 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: holders. There began a vast hegira of evicted settlers
in tattered wagons; going nowhere, cursing injustice,
stunned, purposeless, homeless, hopeless. Their children
began to look up to them for bread, and cry.
It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamil-
ton and Avery had filed upon a strip of land about a mile
wide and three miles long, comprising about two thou-
sand acres, it being the excess over complement of the
Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in
one of the middle-western counties. This two-thousand-
acre body of land was asserted by them to be vacant land,
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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 Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: then living, in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, was one of
these old mansions, built in stone, and not devoid of a certain
richness of style; but time had blackened the stone, and revolutions
in the town had damaged it both outside and inside. The dignitaries
who formerly dwelt in the neighborhood of the University having
disappeared with the great ecclesiastical foundations, this house had
become the home of industries and of inhabitants whom it was never
destined to shelter. During the last century a printing establishment
had worn down the polished floors, soiled the carved wood, blackened
the walls, and altered the principal internal arrangements. Formerly
the residence of a Cardinal, this fine house was now divided among
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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 Odyssey by Homer: the good things that were before them. As soon as they had had
enough to eat and drink they wanted music and dancing, which are
the crowning embellishments of a banquet, so a servant brought a
lyre to Phemius, whom they compelled perforce to sing to them.
As soon as he touched his lyre and began to sing Telemachus
spoke low to Minerva, with his head close to hers that no man
might hear.
"I hope, sir," said he, "that you will not be offended with what
I am going to say. Singing comes cheap to those who do not pay
for it, and all this is done at the cost of one whose bones lie
rotting in some wilderness or grinding to powder in the surf. If
The Odyssey |
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 Lysis by Plato: ignorant to the extent of being evil, for no evil or ignorant person is a
lover of wisdom. There remain those who have the misfortune to be
ignorant, but are not yet hardened in their ignorance, or void of
understanding, and do not as yet fancy that they know what they do not
know: and therefore those who are the lovers of wisdom are as yet neither
good nor bad. But the bad do not love wisdom any more than the good; for,
as we have already seen, neither is unlike the friend of unlike, nor like
of like. You remember that?
Yes, they both said.
And so, Lysis and Menexenus, we have discovered the nature of friendship--
there can be no doubt of it: Friendship is the love which by reason of the
Lysis |
