| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: Campbell, her sister, daughters of Sir Colin Campbell, and to my
great delight, Captain MacDougal brought out the great brooch of
Lorn, which his ancestor won from Bruce and the story of which you
will find in the Lord of the Isles. It fastened the Scotch Plaid,
and is larger than a teacup. He described to me the reverential way
in which Scott took it in both hands when he showed it to him. The
whole evening was pleasant and the more so from being unexpected. .
. . One little thing which adds always to the charm of Scotch
scenery is the dress of the peasantry. One never sees the real
Highland costume, but every shepherd has his plaid slung over one
shoulder, making the most graceful drapery. This, with the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: between his hands and looked down into it.
"You see, you are different, Hilda. Don't you
know you are?" His voice grew softer, his
touch more and more tender. "Some women
can do that sort of thing, but you--you can
love as queens did, in the old time."
Hilda had heard that soft, deep tone in his
voice only once before. She closed her eyes;
her lips and eyelids trembled. "Only one, Bartley.
Only one. And he threw it back at me a second time."
She felt the strength leap in the arms
Alexander's Bridge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: daily use, and be forgotten. Just imagine, for a moment, how
much of human evil will crumble away, with this one change! What
we call real estate--the solid ground to build a house on--is the
broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.
A man will commit almost any wrong,--he will heap up an immense
pile of wickedness, as hard as granite, and which will weigh as
heavily upon his soul, to eternal ages,--only to build a great,
gloomy, dark-chambered mansion, for himself to die in, and for
his posterity to be miserable in. He lays his own dead corpse
beneath the underpinning, as one may say, and hangs his frowning
picture on the wall, and, after thus converting himself into an
House of Seven Gables |
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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after
me like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam
still shining for many a long rood behind me. To lie still over
the Flats, where the waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling
and the sculpins gliding busily and silently beneath the boat, - to
rustle in through the long harsh grass that leads up some tranquil
creek, - to take shelter from the sunbeams under one of the
thousand-footed bridges, and look down its interminable colonnades,
crusted with green and oozy growths, studded with minute barnacles,
and belted with rings of dark muscles, while overhead streams and
thunders that other river whose every wave is a human soul flowing
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
