| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts
that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: temper and credulity of those times, but which the reader will
probably pronounce truly detestable and diabolical.
CHAPTER XXXI.
In which a witch did dwell, in loathly weeds,
And wilful want, all careless of her deeds;
So choosing solitary to abide,
Far from all neighbours, that her devilish deeds
And hellish arts from people she might hide,
And hurt far off, unknown, whome'er she envied.
Faerie Queene.
THE health of Lucy Ashton soon required the assistance of a
The Bride of Lammermoor |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: of it.[20] How could the life of any single tyrant suffice to square
the account? How should he pay in full to the last farthing all the
moneys of all whom he has robbed? with what chains laid upon him make
requital to all those he has thrust into felons' quarters?[21] how
proffer lives enough to die in compensation of the dead men he has
slain? how die a thousand deaths?
[20] Holden aptly cf. Plut. "Sol." 14, {kalon men einai ten torannida
khorion, ouk ekhein de apobasin}, "it was true a tyrrany was a
very fair spot, but it had no way down from it" (Clough, i. p.
181).
[21] Or, "how undergo in his own person the imprisonments he has
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: 500,000 the fiftieth year; about a million the seventy-fifth year.
Now I am going to be liberal about this thing, and consider that
fifty million whites have died in America from the beginning up to
to-day - make it sixty, if you want to; make it a hundred million -
it's no difference about a few millions one way or t'other. Well,
now, you can see, yourself, that when you come to spread a little
dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of
American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering a ten-cent
box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and expecting to
find them again. You can't expect us to amount to anything in
heaven, and we DON'T - now that is the simple fact, and we have got
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