| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: comfortable.
MANLY
This coat was my regimental coat in the late war.
The public tumults of our state have induced me to
buckle on the sword in support of that government
which I once fought to establish. I can only say,
sister, that there was a time when this coat was re-
spectable, and some people even thought that those
men who had endured so many winter campaigns in
the service of their country, without bread, clothing,
or pay, at least deserved that the poverty of their
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Aesop's Fables by Aesop: noticing where he was going, he passed under some trees with
branches growing low down in which his antlers were caught, so
that the Hunter had time to come up. "Alas! alas!" cried the
Hart:
"We often despise what is most useful to us."
The Serpent and the File
A Serpent in the course of its wanderings came into an
armourer's shop. As he glided over the floor he felt his skin
pricked by a file lying there. In a rage he turned round upon it
and tried to dart his fangs into it; but he could do no harm to
heavy iron and had soon to give over his wrath.
Aesop's Fables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: republic, because under this form alone could the two large divisions of
the French bourgeoisie be united; in other words, only under this form
could they place on the order of business the sovereignty of their
class, in lieu of the regime of a privileged faction of the same. If,
this notwithstanding, they are seen as the party of Order to insult the
republic and express their antipathy for it, it happened not out of
royalist traditions only: Instinct taught them that while, indeed, the
republic completes their authority, it at the same time undermined their
social foundation, in that, without intermediary, without the mask of
the crown, without being able to turn aside the national interest by
means of its subordinate struggles among its own conflicting elements
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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 The Aspern Papers by Henry James: have doubted for a moment that the sacred relics were there; never have
failed to feel a certain joy at being under the same roof with them.
After all they were under my hand--they had not escaped me yet;
and they made my life continuous, in a fashion, with the illustrious
life they had touched at the other end. I lost myself in this
satisfaction to the point of assuming--in my quiet extravagance--
that poor Miss Tita also went back, went back, as I used to phrase it.
She did indeed, the gentle spinster, but not quite so far as Jeffrey Aspern,
who was simply hearsay to her, quite as he was to me. Only she had
lived for years with Juliana, she had seen and handled the papers and
(even though she was stupid) some esoteric knowledge had rubbed off on her.
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