| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: east, south, and southwest, as far as the eye could reach. Their
summits were crowned with extensive tracts of pitch pine,
checkered with small patches of the quivering aspen. Lower down
were thick forests of firs and red cedars, growing out in many
places from the very fissures of the rocks. The mountains were
broken and precipitous, with huge bluffs protruding from among
the forests.
Their rocky recesses and beetling cliffs afforded retreats to
innumerable flocks of the bighorn, while their woody summits and
ravines abounded with bears and black-tailed deer. These, with
the numerous herds of buffalo that ranged the lower grounds along
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: our part; we learn morals, as we learn to talk, instinctively, from
conversing with others, in an enlightened age, in a civilized country, in a
good home. A well-educated child of ten years old already knows the
essentials of morals: 'Thou shalt not steal,' 'thou shalt speak the
truth,' 'thou shalt love thy parents,' 'thou shalt fear God.' What more
does he want?
But whence comes this common inheritance or stock of moral ideas? Their
beginning, like all other beginnings of human things, is obscure, and is
the least important part of them. Imagine, if you will, that Society
originated in the herding of brutes, in their parental instincts, in their
rude attempts at self-preservation:--Man is not man in that he resembles,
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: them so active and amusing. The appearance of this mansion and these
rooms, where everything had an aroma of staleness and mediocrity, the
spectacle offered by these two beings, cast away, as it were, on a
rock far from the world and the ideas which are life, startled
Augustine; she could here contemplate the sequel of the scene of which
the first part had struck her at the house of Lebas--a life of stir
without movement, a mechanical and instinctive existence like that of
the beaver; and then she felt an indefinable pride in her troubles, as
she reflected that they had their source in eighteen months of such
happiness as, in her eyes, was worth a thousand lives like this; its
vacuity seemed to her horrible. However, she concealed this not very
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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 Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: horrible remembrance. This was Green Gables and they didn't
want her because she wasn't a boy!
But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full
bloom outside of her window. With a bound she was out of
bed and across the floor. She pushed up the sash--it went
up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn't been opened for a
long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight that
nothing was needed to hold it up.
Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June
morning, her eyes glistening with delight. Oh, wasn't it
beautiful? Wasn't it a lovely place? Suppose she wasn't
Anne of Green Gables |
