| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: knot of the sager folks, who, with Old V an Tassel, sat smoking
at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, and
drawing out long stories about the war.
This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of
those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great
men. The British and American line had run near it during the
war; it had, therefore], been the scene of marauding and infested
with refugees, cow-boys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just
sufficient time had elapsed to enable each story-teller to dress
up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the
indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: will find yourself with few supporters.
Damien HAD NO HAND IN THE REFORMS, ETC.
I think even you will admit that I have already been frank in my
description of the man I am defending; but before I take you up
upon this head, I will be franker still, and tell you that perhaps
nowhere in the world can a man taste a more pleasurable sense of
contrast than when he passes from Damien's "Chinatown" at Kalawao
to the beautiful Bishop-Home at Kalaupapa. At this point, in my
desire to make all fair for you, I will break my rule and adduce
Catholic testimony. Here is a passage from my diary about my visit
to the Chinatown, from which you will see how it is (even now)
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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 Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: to-day, as indeed it is the real and practical end of all true
religion. This is your sacrament urn, your soldier's oath. You
salute and give your fealty to the coming Kingdom of God. And
upon that I would have you fix your minds to the exclusion of
much that, I know only too well, has been narrow and evil and
sectarian in your preparation for this solemn rite. God is like a
precious jewel found among much rubble; you must cast the rubble
from you. The crowning triumph of the human mind is simplicity;
the supreme significance of God lies in his unity and
universality. The God you salute to-day is the God of the Jews
and Gentiles alike, the God of Islam, the God of the Brahmo
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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 The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: labors had deserved. Just as a painter is invariably included in a
category as a landscape painter, a portrait painter, a painter of
history, of sea pieces, or of genre, by a public consisting of
artists, connoisseurs, and simpletons, who, out of envy, or critical
omnipotence, or prejudice, fence in his intellect, assuming, one and
all, that there are ganglions in every brain--a narrow judgment which
the world applies to writers, to statesmen, to everybody who begins
with some specialty before being hailed as omniscient; so Popinot's
fate was sealed, and he was hedged round to do a particular kind of
work. Magistrates, attorneys, pleaders, all who pasture on the legal
common, distinguish two elements in every case--law and equity. Equity
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