| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: the other; in memory whereof the lord of the manor caused this
monument to be erected as a warning to all who love mutton better
than virtue. I will send a copy of this record to him or her who
shall first set me right about this column and its locality.
And telling over these old stories reminds me that I have something
which may interest architects and perhaps some other persons. I
once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the
highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree-work,
frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind you to
keep you from falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to
think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: as bad as a woman can be.
LADY WINDERMERE. Arthur, Arthur, don't talk so bitterly about any
woman. I don't think now that people can be divided into the good
and the bad as though they were two separate races or creations.
What are called good women may have terrible things in them, mad
moods of recklessness, assertion, jealousy, sin. Bad women, as
they are termed, may have in them sorrow, repentance, pity,
sacrifice. And I don't think Mrs. Erlynne a bad woman - I know
she's not.
LORD WINDERMERE. My dear child, the woman's impossible. No matter
what harm she tries to do us, you must never see her again. She is
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