| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: has gone among them with a heart tender with Christ's charity,
and come out outraged, hardened.
One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed
women stopped outside of the cellar-door. They were going home
from the cotton-mill.
"Good-night, Deb," said one, a mulatto, steadying herself
against the gas-post. She needed the post to steady her. So
did more than one of them.
"Dah's a ball to Miss Potts' to-night. Ye'd best come."
"Inteet, Deb, if hur'll come, hur'll hef fun," said a shrill
Welsh voice in the crowd.
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: Asclepius.
SOCRATES: And do the Epidaurians have contests of rhapsodes at the
festival?
ION: O yes; and of all sorts of musical performers.
SOCRATES: And were you one of the competitors--and did you succeed?
ION: I obtained the first prize of all, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Well done; and I hope that you will do the same for us at the
Panathenaea.
ION: And I will, please heaven.
SOCRATES: I often envy the profession of a rhapsode, Ion; for you have
always to wear fine clothes, and to look as beautiful as you can is a part
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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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: it comes over me that I am only a girl at all events, and cannot hold a
sword or give one good blow; and then I have to twist my story round
about, so that the fighting is to stop, and yet me have the best of it,
just like you and the lieutenant; and I am the boy that makes the fine
speeches all through, like Mr. David Balfour."
"You are a bloodthirsty maid," said I.
"Well, I know it is good to sew and spin, and to make samplers," she
said, "but if you were to do nothing else in the great world, I think
you will say yourself it is a driech business; and it is not that I
want to kill, I think. Did ever you kill anyone?"
"That I have, as it chances. Two, no less, and me still a lad that
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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 Paz by Honore de Balzac: connections in Prussia, the authorities shut their eyes to my escape.
I got my dear captain through as a man of no consequence, a family
servant, and we reached Dantzic. There we got on board a Dutch vessel
and went to London. It took us two months to get there. My mother was
ill in England, and expecting me. Paz and I took care of her till her
death, which the Polish troubles hastened. Then we left London and
came to France. Men who go through such adversities become like
brothers. When I reached Paris, at twenty-two years of age, and found
I had an income of over sixty thousand francs a year, without counting
the proceeds of the diamonds and the pictures sold by my mother, I
wanted to secure the future of my dear Paz before I launched into
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