| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: "There seems to be no question, gentlemen, that the poor woman is
badly hurt; but she is still alive, and while she breathes we have
no right to take this work from her. It's not decent to serve a
woman so; and I think, too, it's illegal. I again move that the
whole matter be laid upon the table,"
This motion was not put, nobody seconding it.
Then Justice Rowan rose. The speech of the justice was seasoned
with a brogue as delicate in flavor as the garlic in a Spanish
salad.
"Mr. Prisident and Gintlemen of the Honorable Boord of Village
Trustees," said the justice, throwing back his coat. The
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: found them all three, in the Pythagorean philosophy and in the teaching of
Socrates and of the Megarians respectively; and, because they all furnished
modes of explaining and arranging phenomena, he is unwilling to give up any
of them, though he is unable to unite them in a consistent whole.
Lastly, Plato, though an idealist philosopher, is Greek and not Oriental in
spirit and feeling. He is no mystic or ascetic; he is not seeking in vain
to get rid of matter or to find absorption in the divine nature, or in the
Soul of the universe. And therefore we are not surprised to find that his
philosophy in the Timaeus returns at last to a worship of the heavens, and
that to him, as to other Greeks, nature, though containing a remnant of
evil, is still glorious and divine. He takes away or drops the veil of
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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 St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: my ease in the society of shellfish. He who was the best of our
carvers brought me a snuff-box, which he had just completed, and
which, while it was yet in hand, he had often declared he would not
part with under fifteen dollars. I believe the piece was worth the
money too! And yet the voice stuck in my throat with which I must
thank him. I found myself, in a word, to be fed up like a prisoner
in a camp of anthropophagi, and honoured like the sacrificial bull.
And what with these annoyances, and the risky venture immediately
ahead, I found my part a trying one to play.
It was a good deal of a relief when the third evening closed about
the castle with volumes of sea-fog. The lights of Princes Street
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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 Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: little boy, his brown knees propping a book. By his side, facing
the sea, lay a girl of nineteen or twenty years, her hands
clasped behind her head. Her eyes were closed. She seemed to be
asleep. The reading continued.
"And all his friends knew him again, and cared very much for him
indeed."
Once he thought to himself,' It is a very strange thing that one
cannot get to see the Princess. They all say she is very
beautiful; but what is the use of that, if she has always to sit
in the great copper castle with the many towers? Can I not get
to see her at all? Where is my tinder-box?' And so he struck a
The Brother of Daphne |
