| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning. I
can, therefore, fondly and proudly ascribe to her an earnest love
of knowledge. That a "field hand" should learn to read, in any
slave state, is remarkable; but the achievement of my mother,
considering the place, was very extraordinary; and, in view of
that fact, I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any
love of letters I possess, and for which I have got--despite of
prejudices only too much credit, _not_ to my admitted Anglo-Saxon
paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and
uncultivated _mother_--a woman, who belonged to a race <45
PENALTY FOR HAVING A WHITE FATHER>whose mental endowments it is,
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: took the last, long plunge to the scrap-heap at the shaft's base.
With her fell a shower of her own tiny fliers, for each of
them had come in violent collision with the solid shaft.
I noticed that the wrecked fliers scraped down the shaft's side,
and that their fall was not as rapid as might have been expected;
and then suddenly the secret of the shaft burst upon me,
and with it an explanation of the cause that prevented a flier
that passed too far across the ice-barrier ever returning.
The Warlord of Mars |
