| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
there is doubt about some of these) is:
Work Number of books
The Anabasis 7
The Hellenica 7
The Cyropaedia 8
The Memorabilia 4
Anabasis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: as boatmen, and others as hunters. These last were engaged, not
merely to kill game for provisions, but also, and indeed chiefly,
to trap beaver and other animals of rich furs, valuable in the
trade. They enlisted on different terms. Some were to have a
fixed salary of three hundred dollars; others were to be fitted
out and maintained at the expense of the company, and were to
hunt and trap on shares.
As Mr. Hunt met with much opposition on the part of rival
traders, especially the Missouri Fur Company, it took him some
weeks to complete his preparations. The delays which he had
previously experienced at Montreal, Mackinaw, and on the way,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her fair pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell:
For being both to me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
III.
Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
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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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: of appetite, or a light sickness upon their stomachs; nay, some whose
appetite has been strong, and even craving, and only a light pain in
their heads, have sent for physicians to know what ailed them, and
have been found, to their great surprise, at the brink of death: the
tokens upon them, or the plague grown up to an incurable height.
It was very sad to reflect how such a person as this last mentioned
above had been a walking destroyer perhaps for a week or a fortnight
before that; how he had ruined those that he would have hazarded his
life to save, and had been breathing death upon them, even perhaps in
his tender kissing and embracings of his own children. Yet thus
certainly it was, and often has been, and I could give many particular
A Journal of the Plague Year |
