| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: That they understood. "We love our cats that way.
They surely are our friends, and helpers, too. You can
see how intelligent and affectionate they are."
It was a fact. I'd never seen such cats, except in a few rare
instances. Big, handsome silky things, friendly with everyone
and devotedly attached to their special owners.
"You must have a heartbreaking time drowning kittens," we
suggested. But they said, "Oh, no! You see we care for them
as you do for your valuable cattle. The fathers are few compared
to the mothers, just a few very fine ones in each town; they live
quite happily in walled gardens and the houses of their friends.
Herland |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy Highland home; nor give up
the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother
and thy mother's mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath
days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and other
women's hair.
It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education of girls
more and more to that of boys. If that means that girls are
merely to learn more lessons, and to study what their brothers are
taught, in addition to what their mothers were taught; then it is
to be hoped, at least by physiologists and patriots, that the
scheme will sink into that limbo whither, in a free and tolerably
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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 Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: everything that God Himself possesses; which is far too great for any
human heart to think of desiring if He had not Himself commanded us to
pray for the same. But because He is God, He also claims the honor of
giving much more and more abundantly than any one can comprehend, --
like an eternal, unfailing fountain, which, the more it pours forth and
overflows, the more it continues to give, -- and He desires nothing
more earnestly of us than that we ask much and great things of Him, and
again is angry if we do not ask and pray confidently.
For just as when the richest and most mighty emperor would bid a poor
beggar ask whatever he might desire, and were ready to give great
imperial presents, and the fool would beg only for a dish of gruel, he
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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 Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: that foot and trod light on it, and his track showed it.
I knowed he was blind on his left side because he only
nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I
knowed he had lost an upper front tooth because where
he bit into the sod his teeth-print showed it. The
millet-seed sifted out on one side -- the ants told me
that; the honey leaked out on the other -- the flies
told me that. I know all about your camel, but I
hain't seen him."
Jim says:
"Go on, Mars Tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and
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