| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: We loaded him till he fell out of his chair and laid
there snoring.
"We was ready for business now. I said we better pull
our boots off, and his'n too, and not make any noise,
then we could pull him and haul him around and ransack
him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my
boots and Bud's side by side, where they'd be handy.
Then we stripped him and searched his seams and his
pockets and his socks and the inside of his boots,
and everything, and searched his bundle. Never found
any di'monds. We found the screwdriver, and Hal says,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: to hear Him speak with them as the true Shepherd with His
sheep. This causes me to shudder and fear that at some time He
may send a council of angels upon Germany utterly destroying
us, like Sodom and Gomorrah, because we so wantonly mock Him
with the Council.
Besides such necessary ecclesiastical affairs, there would be
also in the political estate innumerable matters of great
importance to improve. There is the disagreement between the
princes and the states; usury and avarice have burst in like a
flood, and have become lawful [are defended with a show of
right]; wantonness, lewdness, extravagance in dress, gluttony,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: England's famous sons.
From the literary point of view Peace was unfortunate even in the
hour of his notoriety. In the very year of his trial and
execution, the Annual Register, seized with a fit of
respectability from which it has never recovered, announced that
"the appetite for the strange and marvellous" having considerably
abated since the year 1757 when the Register was first
published, its "Chronicle," hitherto a rich mine of extraordinary
and sensational occurrences, would become henceforth a mere diary
of important events. Simultaneously with the curtailment of
its "Chronicle," it ceased to give those excellent summaries of
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
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 Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: "I will rub it now if you wish," said the little angel, not aware of
the injury such work may do to a young girl.
The dining-room was irreproachably in order. Sylvie sat down and
pretended all through breakfast to want this, that, and the other
thing which she would never have thought of in a quieter moment, and
which she now asked for only to make Pierrette rise again and again
just as the child was beginning to eat her food. But such mere teasing
was not enough; she wanted a subject on which to find fault, and was
angry with herself for not finding one. She scarcely answered her
brother's silly remarks, yet she looked at him only; her eyes avoided
Pierrette. Pierrette was deeply conscious of all this. She brought the
|
