| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: and a clue of thread, and by that, perhaps, you may find your
way out again. Only promise me that if you escape safe you
will take me home with you to Greece; for my father will
surely kill me, if he knows what I have done.'
Then Theseus laughed, and said, 'Am I not safe enough now?'
And he hid the sword in his bosom, and rolled up the clue in
his hand; and then he swore to Ariadne, and fell down before
her, and kissed her hands and her feet; and she wept over him
a long while, and then went away; and Theseus lay down and
slept sweetly.
And when the evening came, the guards came in and led 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 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: the tenth page or thereabouts, which, I take it for granted, will
be contained in the periodical where this is found, unless it
differ from all other publications of the kind. Perhaps, if such
young people will lay the number aside, and take it up ten years,
or a little more, from the present time, they may find something in
it for their advantage. They can't possibly understand it all
now.]
My friend, the Professor, began talking with me one day in a dreary
sort of way. I couldn't get at the difficulty for a good while,
but at last it turned out that somebody had been calling him an old
man. - He didn't mind his students calling him THE old man, he
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: nights or seasons of gloom. It would be well if all our lives
were a divine tragedy even, instead of this trivial comedy or
farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others appear to have been exercised in
their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of
culture such as our district schools and colleges do not
contemplate. Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name,
had a good deal more to live for, aye, and to die for, than they
have commonly.
When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he
is walking on a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without
his hearing them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes
Walking |
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 Lesson of the Master by Henry James: that young lady's fortune, moderate as it was, would make the
difference of putting it in his power to cease to work ungratefully
an exhausted vein? Somehow, standing there in the ripeness of his
successful manhood, he didn't suggest that any of his veins were
exhausted. "Don't you remember the moral I offered myself to you
that night as pointing?" St. George continued. "Consider at any
rate the warning I am at present."
This was too much - he WAS the mocking fiend. Paul turned from him
with a mere nod for goodnight and the sense in a sore heart that he
might come back to him and his easy grace, his fine way of
arranging things, some time in the far future, but couldn't
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