| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist,
the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are
great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not
the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the
Revolution of '75. If one were to tell me that this was a
bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities
brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should
not make an ado about it, for I can do without them.
All machines have their friction; and possibly this does
enough good to counter-balance the evil. At any rate, it is
a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: With a queer, hunted look in her soft eyes she worked on,
daubing on paint liberally.
Meanwhile, in the little salle below, Miss Vance sat
stiffly erect, while the prince talked in his shrill
falsetto. Although he set forth his affection for the
engelreine Madchen as simply as the little German baker
in Weir (whom he certainly did resemble) might have done,
she could find, in her agitation, no fitting words in
which to answer him. That she, Clara Vance, should be
the arbiter in a princely alliance! At last she managed
to ask whether Miss Dunbar had given him any
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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 All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: There's nothing here that is too good for him
But only she; and she deserves a lord
That twenty such rude boys might tend upon,
And call her hourly mistress. Who was with him?
SECOND GENTLEMAN.
A servant only, and a gentleman
Which I have sometime known.
COUNTESS.
Parolles, was it not?
SECOND GENTLEMAN.
Ay, my good lady, 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 The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: in London.
No. It was none of these, the salmon stream at Harthover. It was
such a stream as you see in dear old Bewick; Bewick, who was born
and bred upon them. A full hundred yards broad it was, sliding on
from broad pool to broad shallow, and broad shallow to broad pool,
over great fields of shingle, under oak and ash coverts, past low
cliffs of sandstone, past green meadows, and fair parks, and a
great house of gray stone, and brown moors above, and here and
there against the sky the smoking chimney of a colliery. You must
look at Bewick to see just what it was like, for he has drawn it a
hundred times with the care and the love of a true north
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