| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: becomes simplified, and the world would be all the poorer if the
Sibyl of History burned her volumes. Besides, as Gibbon pointed
out, 'a Montesquieu will detect in the most insignificant fact
relations which the vulgar overlook.'
Nor can the scientific investigator of history isolate the
particular elements, which he desires to examine, from disturbing
and extraneous causes, as the experimental chemist can do (though
sometimes, as in the case of lunatic asylums and prisons, he is
enabled to observe phenomena in a certain degree of isolation). So
he is compelled either to use the deductive mode of arguing from
general laws or to employ the method of abstraction, which gives a
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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 Antonia by Willa Cather: When we had to borrow anything, or to send about word that there would
be preaching at the sod schoolhouse, I was always the messenger.
Formerly Fuchs attended to such things after working hours.
All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that
first glorious autumn. The new country lay open before me:
there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way
over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again.
Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me
that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons;
that at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck
out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship
My Antonia |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth: 484
And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,
So is her face illumin'd with her eye;
Whose beams upon his hairless face are fix'd,
As if from thence they borrow'd all their shine. 488
Were never four such lamps together mix'd,
Had not his clouded with his brow's repine;
But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light
Shone like the moon in water seen by night. 492
'O! where am I?' quoth she, 'in earth or heaven,
Or in the ocean drench'd, or in the fire?
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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 Heart of the West by O. Henry: shoulder.
"Son, son, how goes it?" was all he found to say.
"Close to the ground, says you," shouted McGuire, crunching Raidler's
fingers in a grip of steel; "and dat's where I found it--healt' and
strengt', and tumbled to what a cheap skate I been actin'. T'anks fer
kickin' me out, old man. And--say! de joke's on dat croaker, ain't it?
I looked t'rough the window and see him playin' tag on dat Dago kid's
solar plexus."
"You son of a tinker," growled the cattleman, "whyn't you talk up and
say the doctor never examined you?"
"Ah--g'wan!" said McGuire, with a flash of his old asperity, "nobody
Heart of the West |
