| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: quickly altered to seriousness at sight of the butler's expression.
"Mrs. Brewster had a touch of rheumatic neuralgia the first of the
month; do you refer to that?"
"Yes, miss." Grimes spoke more rapidly, but kept his voice lowered.
"The druggist told me what the pills were when I exclaimed at their
size - regular little pellets, no bigger than that," he demonstrated
the size with the tip of his little finger, and would have added
more but the gong over the front door rang out with such suddenness
that both he and Barbara started violently.
"Just a moment, miss," and he hurried to the front bell, to return
after a brief colloquy with a messenger boy, bearing a letter.
The Red Seal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: human failure is a matter of course), and we can also overlook
the verbiage of a good deal of the mind-cure literature, some of
which is so moonstruck with optimism and so vaguely expressed
that an academically trained intellect finds it almost impossible
to read it at all.
The plain fact remains that the spread of the movement has been
due to practical fruits, and the extremely practical turn of
character of the American people has never been better shown than
by the fact that this, their only decidedly original contribution
to the systematic philosophy of life, should be so intimately
knit up with concrete therapeutics. To the importance of
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