| 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: the geography of the country.
The distance, however, is not the chief trouble. The nearer are
the lines of a slave state and the borders of a free one, the
greater the peril. Hired kidnappers infest these borders. Then,
too, we knew that merely reaching a free state did not free us;
that, wherever caught, we could be returned to slavery. We could
see no spot on this side the ocean, where we could be free. We
had heard of Canada, the real Canaan of the American bondmen,
simply as a country to which the wild goose and the swan repaired
at the end of winter, to escape the heat of summer, but not as
the home of man. I knew something of theology, but nothing of
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 The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: the wall-is expressed in Russia in terms of industrial
conscription; in measures, that is to say, which would be
impossible in any country not reduced to such extremities; in
measures which may prove to be the inevitable
accompaniment of national crisis, when such crisis is
economic rather than military. Let us now see what the
Russians, with that machinery at their disposal are trying to do.
It is obvious that since this machinery is dominated by a
political party, it will be impossible to understand the
Russian plans, without understanding that particular political
party's estimate of the situation in general. It is obvious that
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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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: paneling. The shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If
ever man could feel confident that he was absolutely alone, and that
there was no remote possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that
man was the cashier of the house of Nucingen and Company, in the Rue
Saint-Lazare.
Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave. The fire
had died out in the stove, but the room was full of that tepid warmth
which produces the dull heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of a
morning after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no small
part in the reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.
A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong men
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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 Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Earth's body vanisheth:
One solid thing unconquered stands,
The ghost that humbles death.
All else is breath,
All else is breath!
Man rose from out the stinging slime,
Half brute, and sought a soul,
And up the starrier ways of time,
Half god, unto his goal,
He still must climb,
He still must climb!
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