| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey: we reached the second division the newspapers
flayed us. Worcester would never stand for a
second division team. Baseball admirers, reporters,
fans--especially the fans--are fickle. The
admirers quit, the reporters grilled us, and the
fans, though they stuck to the games with that
barnacle-like tenacity peculiar to them, made life
miserable for all of us. I saw the pennant slowly
fading, and the successful season, and the business
deal, and the cottage, and Milly----
But when I thought of her I just could not see
The Redheaded Outfield |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: She loved so to look, and she loved so to listen to the pretty gay
music that she did not notice that a lady had come to the stone
bench, and had seated herself just where Sister Helen Vincula had
sat before she went to see the ladies and to tell them Good-bye.
There were many other ladies on the Mall, and many ladies passed in
their walk by the stone bench where Bessie Bell and the lady sat.
Everybody loved to come to the Mall in the afternoon when the band
played. Everybody loved to hear the gay music. Everybody loved to
see the children in their prettiest clothes, and to see all the
nurses rolling the babies in the carriages with the pretty parasols.
And one of the ladies passing by looked over to the stone bench
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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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: these fables); that their treasure was in only three places in the
world, in Ballenstadt, in the icy mountains of Savoy, and in China;
that whosoever drew on himself the displeasure of the Order,
perished both body and soul; who degraded his rival Rosa to the
sound of military music, and after having had, like every dog, his
day, died in prison in the Wartburg;--of the Rosicrucians, who were
accused of wanting to support and advance the Catholic religion--one
would think the accusation was very unnecessary, seeing that their
actual dealings were with the philosopher's stone, and the exorcism
of spirits: and that the first apostle of the new golden
Rosicrucian order, one Schropfer, getting into debt, and fearing
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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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: call has responded to the doleful accents of that voice! It has
gone far and wide, and high and low, and left scarcely a mortal
roof unvisited. Indeed, the principle is only too universal for
our purpose, and, unless we limit it, will quite break up our
classification of mankind, and convert the whole procession into
a funeral train. We will therefore be at some pains to
discriminate. Here comes a lonely rich man: he has built a noble
fabric for his dwelling-house, with a front of stately
architecture and marble floors and doors of precious woods; the
whole structure is as beautiful as a dream and as substantial as
the native rock. But the visionary shapes of a long posterity,
Mosses From An Old Manse |
