| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: Firmiani and Octave covered some mystery. Returning to the illusions
that gild the days of youth, and judging Madame Firmiani by her
beauty, the old gentleman became convinced that a woman so innately
conscious of her dignity as she appeared to be was incapable of a bad
action. Her dark eyes told of inward peace; the lines of her face were
so noble, the profile so pure, and the passion he had come to
investigate seemed so little to oppress her heart, that the old man
said to himself, while noting all the promises of love and virtue
given by that adorable countenance, "My nephew is committing some
folly."
Madame Firmiani acknowledged to twenty-five. But the Practicals proved
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: unamiable; it was accidental, external, excrescential. Attached to
his face from the left ear to the point of his chin was a monstrous
goitre, which hung down to his collar bone, and was very inadequately
balanced by a smaller one on his right eyelid. Nature's malice was so
overdone in his case that it somehow failed to produce the effect of
repulsion it seemed to have aimed at. When you first met Thomas Tyler
you could think of nothing else but whether surgery could really do
nothing for him. But after a very brief acquaintance you never
thought of his disfigurements at all, and talked to him as you might
to Romeo or Lovelace; only, so many people, especially women, would
not risk the preliminary ordeal, that he remained a man apart and a
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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 The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: closed.
But hard upon that came the desperate attempt of a party of young
clubmen from New York, who, inspired by patriotic and adventurous
imaginations, slipped off in half a dozen motor-cars to Beacon
Hill, and set to work with remarkable vigour to improvise a fort
about the Doan swivel gun that had been placed there. They found
it still in the hands of the disgusted gunners, who had been
ordered to cease fire at the capitulation, and it was easy to
infect these men with their own spirit. They declared their gun
hadn't had half a chance, and,were burning to show what it could
do. Directed by the newcomers, they made a trench and bank about
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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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: which, most critically examined, seems the result of careful
early culture among the best classics of our language; it equals
if it does not surpass the style of Hugh Miller, which was the
wonder of the British literary public, until he unraveled the
mystery in the most interesting of autobiographies. But
Frederick Douglass was still calking the seams of Baltimore
clippers, and had only written a "pass," at the age when Miller's
style was already formed.
I asked William Whipper, of Pennsylvania, the gentleman alluded
to above, whether he thought Mr. Douglass's power inherited from
the Negroid, or from what is called the Caucasian side of his
My Bondage and My Freedom |
