| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: must have arisen also. The library is by far the finest room I ever
saw. Its windows and arches and doorways are all of a fine carved
Gothic open work as light as gossamer. One door which he lately
added cost a thousand pounds, the door alone, not the doorway, so
you can judge of the exquisite workmanship. Here Lady Breadalbane
joined us, whom I had never before met. . . . During dinner the
piper in full costume was playing the pibroch in a gallery outside
the window, and after he had done a band, also in full Highland
dress, played some of the Italian, German as well as Scotch music,
at just an agreeable distance. I have seen nothing in England which
compares in splendor with the state which is kept up here.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: scious children, who once sang and danced in her
presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the dark-
ness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices
of her children, she hears by day the moans of the
dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl.
All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And now,
when weighed down by the pains and aches of old
age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the
beginning and ending of human existence meet, and
helpless infancy and painful old age combine to-
gether--at this time, this most needful time, the time
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain; you would call a man courageous who
remains at his post, and fights with the enemy?
LACHES: Certainly I should.
SOCRATES: And so should I; but what would you say of another man, who
fights flying, instead of remaining?
LACHES: How flying?
SOCRATES: Why, as the Scythians are said to fight, flying as well as
pursuing; and as Homer says in praise of the horses of Aeneas, that they
knew 'how to pursue, and fly quickly hither and thither'; and he passes an
encomium on Aeneas himself, as having a knowledge of fear or flight, and
calls him 'an author of fear or flight.'
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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 Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right
down friendly and sociable, and took a chance in every-
thing that was going, and the caravan could depend on
us to be on hand every time, it didn't make no differ-
ence what it was.
When they camped, we camped right over them, ten
or twelve hundred feet up in the air. When they et a
meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so much home-
liker to have their company. When they had a wed-
ding that night, and Buck and Addy got married, we
got ourselves up in the very starchiest of the professor's
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