| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: leave her unprotected--a degraded victim to the brutal lust of
fiendish overseers, who would pollute, blight, and blast her fair
soul--rob her of all dignity--destroy her virtue, and annihilate
in her person all the graces that adorn the character of virtuous
womanhood? I ask, how would you regard me, if such were my
conduct? Oh! the vocabulary of the damned would not afford a
word sufficiently infernal to express your idea of my God-
provoking wickedness. Yet, sir, your treatment of my beloved
sisters is in all essential points precisely like the case I have
now supposed. Damning as would be such a deed on my part, it
would be no more so than that which you have committed against me
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: most brilliant and agreeable of companions. He had
talked, and she had spoken only with her listening,
sympathetic eyes. He was always apt to be voluble. On
this occasion he was too voluble.
"You are from Weir, I think, in Delaware, Mrs. Waldeaux?"
he asked. "I must have seen the name of the town with
yours on the list of passengers, for the story of a woman
who once lived there has been haunting me all day. I
have not seen nor thought of her for years, and I could
not account for my sudden remembrance of her."
"Who was she?" asked George, trying to save his mother
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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 Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: wonder.
On the eleventh day we reached our destination--a walled
frontier city of about twenty thousand. We passed some
lakes, and crossed some old canals before entering the
gates. Within, beside the frame buildings, were many built
of ancient brick and well-cut stone. These, I was told,
were of material taken from the ruins of the ancient city
which, once, had stood upon the site of the present town.
The name of the town, translated from the Abyssinian, is New
Gondar. It stands, I am convinced, upon the ruins of
ancient Berlin, the one time capital of the old German
Lost Continent |
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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: potent in the financial world as Bohm, could bring a borrowing empire to
his own terms just as skillfully as could Bohm; was, in short, a man
after Bohm's own--I had almost said heart: the expression is so
obstinately embedded in our language! Bohm, listening, and Charley,
talking, had neither of them noticed Mrs. Weguelin's arrival; they stood
ignoring her, while she waited, casting a timid eye upon them. But
Beverly, suddenly perceiving this, and begging her pardon for them,
brought the party together, and we moved in among the old graves.
"Ah!" said Gazza, bending to read the quaint words cut upon one of them,
as we stopped while the door at the rear of the church was being opened,
"French!"
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