| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Well, I thought that too, so I just stroked her hand, and after a
minute she got her color again. "It is hard for him," she said.
"He thinks this is all vulgar and American, and--oh, Minnie, I
want to get away, and yet what shall I do without you to keep me
sensible."
"You'll be a long ways off soon," I said, touching the ring under
my hand.
"I wish you could come with me," she said, but I shook my head.
"Here is one dog that isn't going to sit under any rich man's
table and howl for crumbs," I answered. "If he kicked ME, I'd
bite him."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: 'rhetoric turned logic,' and equally fallacious. There were reasoners in
ancient as well as in modern times, who could never receive the natural
impression of Homer, or of any other book which they read. The argument of
Socrates, in which he picks out the apparent inconsistencies and
discrepancies in the speech and actions of Achilles, and the final paradox,
'that he who is true is also false,' remind us of the interpretation by
Socrates of Simonides in the Protagoras, and of similar reasonings in the
first book of the Republic. The discrepancies which Socrates discovers in
the words of Achilles are perhaps as great as those discovered by some of
the modern separatists of the Homeric poems...
At last, Socrates having caught Hippias in the toils of the voluntary and
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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 A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: but from the austere and musical side--"
"No more of that jargon," the Marquise broke in, "in print it may be
endurable; but to have it grating upon my ears is a punishment which I
do not in the least deserve."
"He first met Claudine on this wise," continued Nathan. "It was one of
the unfilled days, when Youth is a burden to itself; days when youth,
reduced by the overweening presumption of Age to a condition of
potential energy and dejection, emerges therefrom (like Blondet under
the Restoration), either to get into mischief or to set about some
colossal piece of buffoonery, half excused by the very audacity of its
conception. La Palferine was sauntering, cane in hand, up and down the
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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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: Padre Ignacio.
"Indeed, it would not appear to be so," returned young Gaston. "I think
the Comedie Francaise must be round the corner."
A thrill went through the priest at the theater's name. "And have you
been long in America?" he asked.
"Why, always--except two years of foreign travel after college."
"An American!" exclaimed the surprised Padre, with perhaps a tone of
disappointment in his voice. "But no Americans who are yet come this way
have been--have been"--he veiled the too-blunt expression of his
thought--"have been familiar with The Huguenots," he finished, making a
slight bow.
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