| 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: his crying; learns to esteem his bruises but slight, because
others so esteem them. In a word, he is, for the most part of
the first eight years of his life, a spirited, joyous,
uproarious, and happy boy, upon whom troubles fall only like
water on a duck's back. And such a boy, so far as I can now
remember, was the boy whose life in slavery I am now narrating.
CHAPTER II
_Removed from My First Home_
THE NAME "OLD MASTER" A TERROR--COLONEL LLOYD'S PLANTATION--WYE
RIVER--WHENCE ITS NAME--POSITION OF THE LLOYDS--HOME ATTRACTION--
MEET OFFERING--JOURNEY FROM TUCKAHOE TO WYE RIVER--SCENE ON
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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: She began by being interested in his demonstrations and his
biological theory, then she was attracted by his character, and
then, in a manner, she fell in love with his mind.
One day they were at tea in the laboratory and a discussion
sprang up about the question of women's suffrage. The movement
was then in its earlier militant phases, and one of the women
only, Miss Garvice, opposed it, though Ann Veronica was disposed
to be lukewarm. But a man's opposition always inclined her to
the suffrage side; she had a curious feeling of loyalty in seeing
the more aggressive women through. Capes was irritatingly
judicial in the matter, neither absurdly against, in which case
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: every night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keep
from getting myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings of
sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like
this:
"IN THAT REGION THE WEATHER--"
"AT THAT TIME IT WAS A CUSTOM--"
"BUT IN CALIFORNIA ONE NEVER HEARD--"
Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the
lecture and protected me against skipping. But they all looked
about alike on the page; they formed no picture; I had them by
heart, but I could never with certainty remember the order of
What is Man? |
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 Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow
Pan's moods as he lolls by the shore
Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow;
Nevermore
Shall they start at the sound of his reed-fashioned
flute;
Fallen mute
Are the strings of Apollo,
His lyre and his lute;
And the lips of the Memnons are mute
Evermore;
|
