| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: was wrung by the anguish in her voice. "Do speak at last--
you must speak! I don't want to ask you to harm the girl;
but you must see that your silence is doing her more harm
than your answering my questions could. You're leaving me
only the worst things to think of her...she'd see that
herself if she were here. What worse injury can you do her
than to make me hate her--to make me feel she's plotted with
you to deceive us?"
"Oh, not that!" Darrow heard his own voice before he was
aware that he meant to speak. "Yes; I did see her in
Paris," he went on after a pause; "but I was bound to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: alarm, the murderer himself was calm and collected, and appeared
as though nothing unusual had happened. The atrocity roused my
old master, and he spoke out, in reprobation of it; but the whole
thing proved to be less than a nine days' wonder. Both Col.
Lloyd and my old master arraigned Gore for his cruelty in the
matter, but this amounted to nothing. His reply, or
explanation--as I remember to have heard it at the time was, that
the extraordinary expedient was demanded by necessity; that Denby
had become unmanageable; that he had set a dangerous example to
the other slaves; and that, without some such prompt measure as
that to which he had resorted, were adopted, there would be an
My Bondage and My Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: mounted on filagree, mosaics which inspire theft, Dutch pictures in
the style which Schinner has adopted, angels such as Steinbock
conceived but often could not execute, statuettes modelled by genius
pursued by creditors (the real explanation of the Arabian myth),
superb sketches by our best artists, lids of chests made into panels
alternating with fluted draperies of Italian silk, portieres hanging
from rods of old oak in tapestried masses on which the figures of some
hunting scene are swarming, pieces of furniture worthy to have
belonged to Madame de Pompadour, Persian rugs, et cetera. For a last
graceful touch, all these elegant things were subdued by the half-
light which filtered through embroidered curtains and added to their
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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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: last.
Louis had worked at night, unknown to his mother, and made immense
progress between June and September. In algebra he had come as far as
equations with two unknown quantities; he had studied descriptive
geometry, and drew admirably well; in fact, he was prepared to pass
the entrance examination of the Ecole polytechnique.
Sometimes of an evening he went down to the bridge of Tours. There was
a lieutenant there on half-pay, an Imperial naval officer, whose manly
face, medal, and gait had made an impression on the boy's imagination,
and the officer on his side had taken a liking to the lad, whose eyes
sparkled with energy. Louis, hungering for tales of adventure, and
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