| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Deaf, blind, and prone on face and knee,
Forgets time, family, and feast,
And digs like a demented beast.
Tall as a guardsman, pale as the east at dawn,
Who strides in strange apparel on the lawn?
Rails for his breakfast? routs his vassals out
(Like boys escaped from school) with song and shout?
Kind and unkind, his Maker's final freak,
Part we deride the child, part dread the antique!
See where his gang, like frogs, among the dew
Crouch at their duty, an unquiet crew;
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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 Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: tortillas; you come here to me. See this wallet full of nice
new bills? They're all for you, darling. Sure, I want you
to have them. Figure it out for yourself. I'm drunk, see:
I've a bit of a load on and that's why I'm kind of hoarse,
you might call it. I left half my gullet down Guadalajara
way, and I've been spitting the other half out all the way
up here. Oh well, who cares? But I want you to have that
money, see, dearie? Hey, Sergeant, where's my bottle?
Now, little girl, come here and pour yourself a drink.
You won't, eh? Aw, come on! Afraid of your--er--hus-
band . . . or whatever he is, huh? Well, if he's skulking in
The Underdogs |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: be better now to wait and prepare her mind gradually for the
only proposition which his exalted estate would permit him
to offer her. He would go slow. He glanced down at the
girl's profile. It was bathed in the silvery light of the
great tropic moon. The Hon. Morison Baynes wondered if it were
to be so easy a matter to "go slow." She was most alluring.
Meriem rose. The vision of Korak was still before her.
"Good night," she said. "It is almost too beautiful to leave,"
she waved her hand in a comprehensive gesture which took in
the starry heavens, the great moon, the broad, silvered plain,
and the dense shadows in the distance, that marked the jungle.
The Son of Tarzan |
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 Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: coal-dealers."
"You know Mrs. Grogan, then?" asked Babcock, after the delay in
the delivery of the coal had been explained. He had been waiting
for some such opportunity to discover more about his stevedore.
He never discussed personalities with his men.
"Well, I should say so--known her for years. Best woman on top of
Staten Island. Does she work for you?"
"Yes, and has for some years; but I must confess I never knew
Grogan was a woman until I found her on the dock a few weeks ago,
handling a cargo. She works like a machine. How long has she
been a widow?"
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