| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: purpose.
Yet she pressed onward, with all the speed which her exhausted
frame could exert. When food became indispensable, she entered
the first cottage. "Give me to eat," she said. "I am the widow
of MacTavish Mhor--I am the mother of Hamish MacTavish Bean,--
give me to eat, that I may once more see my fair-haired son."
Her demand was never refused, though granted in many cases with a
kind of struggle between compassion and aversion in some of those
to whom she applied, which was in others qualified by fear. The
share she had had in occasioning the death of Allan Breack
Cameron, which must probably involve that of her own son, was not
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: them here."
No doubt, the invitations for the occasion had appointed one
o'clock as the time, for between that hour and two, the guests
arrived in an almost unbroken stream. From their point of
vantage in the round window of the main room, Magnus, his two
sons, and Presley looked on very interested. Cedarquist had
excused himself, affirming that he must look out for his women
folk.
Of every ten of the arrivals, seven, at least, were ladies. They
entered the room--this unfamiliar masculine haunt, where their
husbands, brothers, and sons spent so much of their time--with a
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: antiquity and modern curiosity, I cannot quit my observations so
soon. But being happily fixed, by the favour of a particular
friend, at so beautiful a spot of ground as this of Clarendon Park,
I made several little excursions from hence to view the northern
parts of this county--a county so fruitful of wonders that, though
I do not make antiquity my chief search, yet I must not pass it
over entirely, where so much of it, and so well worth observation,
is to be found, which would look as if I either understood not the
value of the study, or expected my readers should be satisfied with
a total omission of it.
I have mentioned that this county is generally a vast continued
|
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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: less skilfully armed and less civilised than the descendants of the race of
Pericles and Leonidas, but who were a branch of that great Teutonic folk
whose monogamous domestic life was sound at the core, and whose fearless,
labouring, and resolute women yet bore for the men they followed to the
ends of the earth, what Spartan women once said they alone bore--men.
In Rome, in the days of her virtue and vigour, the Roman matron laboured
mightily, and bore on her shoulders her full half of the social burden,
though her sphere of labour and influence was even somewhat smaller than
that of the Teutonic sisterhood whose descendants were finally to supplant
her own. From the vestal virgin to the matron, the Roman woman in the days
of the nation's health and growth fulfilled lofty functions and bore the
|
