| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: he thought he had reason to believe it. He never conceived a
respect for the world, because he had begun with no idols that it
had smashed.
He clad his soul in armor by means of happening hilariously in
at a mission church where a man composed his sermons of "yous."
While they got warm at the stove, he told his hearers just where he
calculated they stood with the Lord. Many of the sinners were
impatient over the pictured depths of their degradation. They were
waiting for soup-tickets.
A reader of words of wind-demons might have been able to see
the portions of a dialogue pass to and fro between the exhorter and
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: tearful eyes, and that poor, dripping, bloody mess that had been
a skilful human hand five minutes before, thrust out in indignant
protest. "Damned foolery," he had stormed and sobbed, "damned
foolery. My right hand, sir! My RIGHT hand. . . ."
'My faith had for a time gone altogether out of me. "I think we
are too--too silly," I said to Mylius, "ever to stop war. If we'd
had the sense to do it, we should have done it before this. I
think this----" I pointed to the gaunt black outline of a smashed
windmill that stuck up, ridiculous and ugly, above the blood-lit
waters--"this is the end." '
Section 10
The Last War: A World Set Free |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: procedure, as he believed, lay the secret of true calm, engendering a
dauntless self-assurance, imperturbable, unerring, impervious to
treacherous assault. Therefore by such behaviour he was a terror to
the enemy, whilst he infused courage and strength in the hearts of his
friends, so that throughout his life he continued to be a man whom his
foes dared not despise, whom his fellow-citizens cared not to arraign,
within the circle of his friends held blameless, the idol and
admiration of the outer world.[9]
[8] See above, ii. 3; "Pol. Lac." iii. 5.
[9] Cf. Tacitus's phrase concerning Titus, "deliciae humani generis."
VII
|
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 Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: startled me. It was the tall, stately woman of the Ontario, the
woman I had last seen cowering beside the road, rolling pebbles in
her hand, blood streaming from a cut over her eye. I could see the
scar now, a little affair, about an inch long, gleaming red through
its layers of powder.
And then, quite unexpectedly, she turned and looked directly at me.
After a minute's uncertainty, she bowed, letting her eyes rest on
mine with a calmly insolent stare. She glanced at McKnight for a
moment, then back to me. When she looked away again I breathed
easier.
"Who is it?" asked McKnight under his breath.
The Man in Lower Ten |
