| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory
before the war has been made fact by the war.
There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive teacher,
though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come to us,
and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never
a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means
of progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed
and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings
for manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative,
and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression,
the result is the same,--society is instructed, or may be.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: on up there?"
"Up in de inn," said the dusky one, "dey is a weddin' goin' on. Mr.
Binkley, a mighty rich man, am marryin' Miss Trenholme, sah--de young
lady who am quite de belle of de place, sah."
HE ALSO SERVES
If I could have a thousand years--just one little thousand years--more
of life, I might, in that time, draw near enough to true Romance to
touch the hem of her robe.
Up from ships men come, and from waste places and forest and road and
garret and cellar to maunder to me in strangely distributed words of
the things they have seen and considered. The recording of their
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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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: Jarvis, and filled the room of the new-born child with light. I was
told that he said, 'The work is accomplished; the Heavens rejoice!'
Sounds of unknown melodies were heard throughout the house, seeming to
come from the four points of heaven on the wings of the wind. The
spirit of Swedenborg led the father forth to the shores of the fiord
and there quitted him. Certain inhabitants of Jarvis, having
approached Monsieur Seraphitus as he stood on the shore, heard him
repeat those blissful words of Scripture: 'How beautiful on the
mountains are the feet of Him who is sent of God!'
"I had left the parsonage on my way to baptize the infant and name it,
and perform the other duties required by law, when I met the baron
Seraphita |
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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: love of letters, and even some artistic conscience. But he will find
not one of the models of his type (I say nothing of mere imitators of
it) below the rank that looks at the middle class, not humbly and
enviously from below, but insolently from above. Mr Harris himself
notes Shakespear's contempt for the tradesman and mechanic, and his
incorrigible addiction to smutty jokes. He does us the public service
of sweeping away the familiar plea of the Bardolatrous ignoramus, that
Shakespear's coarseness was part of the manners of his time, putting
his pen with precision on the one name, Spenser, that is necessary to
expose such a libel on Elizabethan decency. There was nothing
whatever to prevent Shakespear from being as decent as More was before
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