| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: suppose the best dressmaker in the place can earn?--five sous a day!"
adding, after a pause, "and her food."
"But see," I said, "how the winds from the sea bend or destroy
everything. There are no trees. Fragments of wreckage or old vessels
that are broken up are sold to those who can afford to buy; for costs
of transportation are too heavy to allow them to use the firewood with
which Brittany abounds. This region is fine for none but noble souls;
persons without sentiments could never live here; poets and barnacles
alone should inhabit it. All that ever brought a population to this
rock were the salt-marshes and the factory which prepares the salt. On
one side the sea; on the other, sand; above, illimitable space."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: her lips and shone in her dimmed eyes.
"You know him better than I do," she murmured almost inaudibly,
"you know him better than I do, and I have known him for so long."
A moment later Muller had parted from the housekeeper with a warm,
sincere pressure of the hand.
"Lieutenant Theobald Leining was here on a visit to his sister last
March, wasn't he?" the detective asked as Franz led him out of the
gate.
"Yes, sir; the Lieutenant was here just about that time," answered
the old man.
And he left here on the 16th of March?"
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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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: them to the bad place, where they would be "burnt up."
Nevertheless, I could not reconcile the relation of slavery with
my crude notions of goodness.
Then, too, I found that there were puzzling exceptions to this
theory of slavery on both sides, and in the middle. I knew of
blacks who were _not_ slaves; I knew of whites who were _not_
slaveholders; and I knew of persons who were _nearly_ white, who
were slaves. _Color_, therefore, was a very unsatisfactory basis
for slavery.
Once, however, engaged in the inquiry, I was not very long in
finding out the true solution of the matter. It was not _color_,
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--
seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation.
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather
than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen,
Second Inaugural Address |
