| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which
we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble
struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged
ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest
shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!
An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable
an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week,
or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British
guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength but
irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: so exactly like part of the wigmaker's work. The other side was still
fairly white, and clean enough to have a few lines written on it. The
delicate and tiresome task of unsticking it had been begun in La
Force; two hours would not have been long enough; it had taken him
half of the day before. The prisoner began by tearing this precious
scrap of paper so as to have a strip four or five lines wide, which he
divided into several bits; he then replaced his store of paper in the
same strange hiding-place, after damping the gummed side so as to make
it stick again. He felt in a lock of his hair for one of those pencil
leads as thin as a stout pin, then recently invented by Susse, and
which he had put in with some gum; he broke off a scrap long enough to
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: York got down, and said very respectfully, "I beg your pardon, my lady,
but these horses have not been reined up for three years,
and my lord said it would be safer to bring them to it by degrees;
but if your ladyship pleases I can take them up a little more."
"Do so," she said.
York came round to our heads and shortened the rein himself -- one hole,
I think; every little makes a difference, be it for better or worse,
and that day we had a steep hill to go up. Then I began to understand
what I had heard of. Of course, I wanted to put my head forward
and take the carriage up with a will, as we had been used to do; but no,
I had to pull with my head up now, and that took all the spirit out of me,
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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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: have insulted them, they leave them alone. In the case of the
novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest,
the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely
ridiculous. No country produces such badly-written fiction, such
tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as
England. It must necessarily be so. The popular standard is of
such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at once too
easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy,
because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style,
psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are
concerned are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the
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