| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: as Amy sat down beside her with the confiding air elderly people like
so well in the young.
"Yes, Aunt. Mrs. Chester asked me if I would, and I offered to
tend a table, as I have nothing but my time to give."
"I'm not," put in Jo decidedly. "I hate to be patronized, and
the Chesters think it's a great favor to allow us to help with their
highly connected fair. I wonder you consented, Amy, they only want
you to work."
"I am willing to work. It's for the freedmen as well as the
Chesters, and I think it very kind of them to let me share the
labor and the fun. Patronage does not trouble me when it is well
Little Women |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: only in details seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty
thousands of times, and felt, with Pindar, that water was the best
of things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, remember one
particular pailful of water, flavored with the white-pine of which
the pail was made, and the brown mug out of which one Edmund, a
red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a
fragment in his haste to drink; it being then high summer, and
little full-blooded boys feeling very warm and porous in the low-
"studded" school-room where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled
over young children, many of whom are old ghosts now, and have
known Abraham for twenty or thirty years of our mortal time.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: you without love. Let us wait until I know myself better.
Though you have spoken to me of the matter before,
I realize now that I never have made any effort
to determine whether or not I really can love you.
There is time enough before we reach civilization,
if ever we are fortunate enough to do so at all.
Will you not be as generous as you are brave,
and give me a few days before I must make you a final answer?"
With Professor Maxon's solemn promise to insure his
ultimate success von Horn was very gentle and gracious
in deferring to the girl's wishes. The girl for her
The Monster Men |
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 Moby Dick by Herman Melville: cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into
distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of
mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture
lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs
like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the
shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit
the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade
knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one charm
wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara
but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see
it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two
Moby Dick |
