| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: was obtaining any marked advantage over him, or was injuring him,
but because he was gaining none over me, and was not able, single
handed, to conquer me. He called for his cousin Hughs, to come
to his assistance, and now the scene was changed. I was
compelled to <188>give blows, as well as to parry them; and,
since I was, in any case, to suffer for resistance, I felt (as
the musty proverb goes) that "I might as well be hanged for an
old sheep as a lamb." I was still _defensive_ toward Covey, but
_aggressive_ toward Hughs; and, at the first approach of the
latter, I dealt a blow, in my desperation, which fairly sickened
my youthful assailant. He went off, bending over with pain, and
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: She had liked the young man's looks, and his short-
sighted eyes, and his odd way of speaking, that was
abrupt yet soft, just as his hands were sun-burnt and
sinewy, yet with smooth nails like a woman's. His hair
was sunburnt-looking too, or rather the colour of
bracken after frost; his eyes grey, with the appealing
look of the shortsighted, his smile shy yet confident,
as if he knew lots of things she had never dreamed of,
and yet wouldn't for the world have had her feel his
superiority. But she did feel it, and liked the
feeling; for it was new to her. Poor and ignorant as
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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 Under the Andes by Rex Stout: amusing for more than a month at a time), I bade my friend au
revoir and departed for the East. But I found myself just too
late for an archeological expedition into the heart of Egypt, and
after a tiresome week or so in Cairo and Constantinople I again
turned my face toward the west.
At Rome I met an old friend, one Pierre Janvour, in the French
diplomatic service, and since I had nothing better to do I
accepted
his urgent invitation to join him on a vacation trip to Paris.
But the joys of Paris are absurd to a man of thirty-two who
has seen the world and tasted it and judged it. Still I found
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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 Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: fly in your face.
If you are in a hurry and there are no suitable stones at hand, lay
two good logs nearly parallel with each other, a foot or so apart,
and build your fire between them. For a cooking-fire, use split
wood in short sticks. Let the first supply burn to glowing coals
before you begin. A frying-pan that is lukewarm one minute and red-
hot the next is the abomination of desolation. If you want black
toast, have it made before a fresh, sputtering, blazing heap of
wood.
In fires, as in men, an excess of energy is a lack of usefulness.
The best work is done without many sparks. Just enough is the right
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