| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: fall from the leaden sky of that winter without sun-
shine. All the faces were sad. He could talk to
no one, and had no hope of ever understanding
anybody. It was as if these had been the faces of
people from the other world--dead people--he
used to tell me years afterwards. Upon my word,
I wonder he did not go mad. He didn't know
where he was. Somewhere very far from his moun-
tains--somewhere over the water. Was this Amer-
ica, he wondered?
"If it hadn't been for the steel cross at Miss
Amy Foster |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs: she assured him that I was now fully fit to travel, the jed
ordered that we mount and ride after the main column.
I was strapped securely to as wild and unmanageable a
thoat as I had ever seen, and, with a mounted warrior on
either side to prevent the beast from bolting, we rode forth
at a furious pace in pursuit of the column. My wounds gave
me but little pain, so wonderfully and rapidly had the
applications and injections of the female exercised their
therapeutic powers, and so deftly had she bound and plastered
the injuries.
Just before dark we reached the main body of troops
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: any one read the accounts of the Turkish armies in the fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when they were the tutors and
models of all Europe in the art of war, and then consider the fact that
those very armies require now to be officered by foreign adventurers, in
order to make them capable of even keeping together, and let him ask
himself seriously, whether such a fall can ever be recovered. When, in
the age of Theodosius, and again in that of Justinian, the Roman armies
had fallen into the same state; when the Italian legions required to be
led by Stilicho the Vandal, and the Byzantine by Belisar the Sclav and
Narses the Persian, the end of all things was at hand, and came; as it
will come soon to Turkey.
|
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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: don't starve them. These are, however, some painful exceptions
to this rule. While it is quite true that most of the
slaveholders in Baltimore feed and clothe their slaves well,
there are others who keep up their country cruelties in the city.
An instance of this sort is furnished in the case of a family
<116>who lived directly opposite to our house, and were named
Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton owned two slaves. Their names were
Henrietta and Mary. They had always been house slaves. One was
aged about twenty-two, and the other about fourteen. They were a
fragile couple by nature, and the treatment they received was
enough to break down the constitution of a horse. Of all the
My Bondage and My Freedom |
