| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: To seek a refuge in remote abodes.
Last, to support her in so long a way,
He shows her where his hidden treasure lay.
Admonish'd thus, and seiz'd with mortal fright,
The queen provides companions of her flight:
They meet, and all combine to leave the state,
Who hate the tyrant, or who fear his hate.
They seize a fleet, which ready rigg'd they find;
Nor is Pygmalion's treasure left behind.
The vessels, heavy laden, put to sea
With prosp'rous winds; a woman leads the way.
Aeneid |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: essentials, what France has been passing through during the past
two or three years, in the matter of periodical frights, horrors,
and shudderings.
In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. In
that day, for a man to speak out openly and proclaim himself an
enemy of negro slavery was simply to proclaim himself a madman.
For he was blaspheming against the holiest thing known to a
Missourian, and could NOT be in his right mind. For a man to
proclaim himself an anarchist in France, three years ago, was to
proclaim himself a madman--he could not be in his right mind.
Now the original first blasphemer against any institution
What is Man? |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: every gentle rising of the seabreeze.
XII
A Strange Sail
EXCEPT FOR a few stray guests, islanders or from the inland
country, to whom Mrs. Todd offered the hospitalities of a single
meal, we were quite by ourselves all summer; and when there were
signs of invasion, late in July, and a certain Mrs. Fosdick
appeared like a strange sail on the far horizon, I suffered much
from apprehension. I had been living in the quaint little house
with as much comfort and unconsciousness as if it were a larger
body, or a double shell, in whose simple convolutions Mrs. Todd and
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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 Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: It is easy to see from these conditions that Lincoln refused to
consider the matter seriously, and determined to treat it as
absurdly as it deserved. He and Shields, and their respective
seconds, with the broadswords, hurried away to an island in the
Mississippi River, opposite Alton; but long before the plank was
set up, or swords were drawn, mutual friends took the matter out
of the hands of the seconds, and declared a settlement of the
difficulty.
The affair created much talk and merriment in Springfield, but
Lincoln found in it more than comedy. By means of it he and Miss
Todd were again brought together in friendly interviews, and on
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