| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kenilworth by Walter Scott: obliged to be so constantly in her company--I loved her, in
short, mine host, and her father saw it."
"And crossed your true loves, no doubt?" said mine host. "It is
the way in all such cases; and I judge it must have been so in
your instance, from the heavy sigh you uttered even now."
"The case was different, mine host. My suit was highly approved
by the generous Sir Hugh Robsart; it was his daughter who was
cold to my passion."
"She was the more dangerous enemy of the two," said the
innkeeper. "I fear me your suit proved a cold one."
"She yielded me her esteem," said Tressilian, "and seemed not
Kenilworth |
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: of me, pacing up and down under the arching maple trees,
where the moonlight filtered through the lush June foliage.
They hurried toward me; they were waiting for me--Lena and Tony
and Anna Hansen.
`Oh, Jim, it was splendid!' Tony was breathing hard,
as she always did when her feelings outran her language.
`There ain't a lawyer in Black Hawk could make a speech
like that. I just stopped your grandpa and said so to him.
He won't tell you, but he told us he was awful surprised himself,
didn't he, girls?'
Lena sidled up to me and said teasingly, `What made you so solemn?
My Antonia |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: narrow hole, dug down through the green sod, down through the brown
loam, down through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was
an oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face of a young man
seen through an opening at one end of it. When the lid was closed,
and the gravel and stones rattled down pell-mell, and the woman in
black, who was crying and wringing her hands, went off with the
other mourners, and left him, then I felt that I had seen Death,
and should never forget him.
One other acquaintance I made at an earlier period of life than the
habit of romancers authorizes. - Love, of course. - She was a
famous beauty afterwards. - I am satisfied that many children
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: palliation, not even for the cure, but for the prevention, yea,
the utter extermination, of pestilence.
About the middle of the sixteenth century, as far as I can
ascertain, another and even more painful phenomenon appears in our
great cities--a dangerous class. How it arose is not yet clear.
That the Reformation had something to do with the matter, we can
hardly doubt. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the more
idle, ignorant, and profligate members of the mendicant orders,
unable to live any longer on the alms of the public, sunk,
probably, into vicious penury. The frightful misgovernment of
this country during the minority of Edward the Sixth, especially
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