| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: intellect--what, for instance, it behooves a man to do here
in American today with regard to slavery--but ventures, or
is driven, to make some such desperate answer to the
following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a
private man--from which what new and singular of social
duties might be inferred? "The manner," says he, "in which
the governments of the States where slavery exists are to
regulate it is for their own consideration, under the
responsibility to their constituents, to the general laws of
propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations
formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: with the obstinacy peculiar to old persons. Madame Sauviat came nearly
every day into Limoges to see her daughter, and the latter still
continued to make her mother's house, from which was a charming view
of the river, the object of her walks. From the road leading to it
could be seen that island long loved by Veronique and called by her
the Ile de France.
In order not to complicate our history of the Graslin household with
the foregoing incidents, we have thought it best to end that of the
Sauviats by anticipating events, which are moreover useful as
explaining the private and hidden life which Madame Graslin now led.
The old mother, noticing that Graslin's miserliness, which returned
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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 The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: this low world? Either that must be so, or God is not, and our life is
no more than a cruel jest."
She entered and turned the house quickly; I found her on the sofa,
crouching, as though blasted by the voice which flung Saul to the
ground.
"What is the matter?" I asked.
"I no longer know what is virtue," she replied; "I have no
consciousness of my own."
We were silent, petrified, listening to the echo of those words which
fell like a stone cast into a gulf.
"If I am mistaken in my life SHE is right in HERS," Henriette said at
The Lily of the Valley |
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 Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum: my poor, innocent Scraps," remarked the Cat.
"The world doesn't consist wholly of the trees
that are on all sides of us."
"But they're part of it; and aren't they pretty
trees?" returned Scraps, bobbing her head until
her brown yarn curls fluttered in the breeze.
"Growing between them I can see lovely ferns
and wild-flowers, and soft green mosses. If the
rest of your world is half as beautiful I shall be
glad I'm alive."
"I don't know what the rest of the world is
The Patchwork Girl of Oz |
