| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: challenge from him, and in the rencounter received a mortal
wound. Such are the ways of Heaven, mysterious in our eyes.
Lady Forester never recovered the shock of this dismal
intelligence.
*
"And did this tragedy," said I, "take place exactly at the time
when the scene in the mirror was exhibited?"
"It is hard to be obliged to maim one's story," answered my aunt,
"but to speak the truth, it happened some days sooner than the
apparition was exhibited."
"And so there remained a possibility," said I, "that by some
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: I am not stopping this great blessing; under Providence, I am
bringing it."
"That is a pretty good joke," said the Reporter, laughing as well
as he could in the strangling rain - "a mule driver's prayer
answered!"
"Child of levity and scoffing," replied the other; "you err again,
misled by these humble habiliments. I am the Rev. Ezekiel Thrifft,
a minister of the gospel, now in the service of the great
manufacturing firm of Skinn & Sheer. They make balloons, kites,
dynamite bombs, and electrical apparatus."
The Citizen and the Snakes
Fantastic Fables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: Large, loving, and languid, the stars here and there,
Like the eyes of shy passionate women, look'd down
O'er the dim world whose sole tender light was their own,
When Matilda, alone, from her chamber descended,
And enter'd the garden, unseen, unattended.
Her forehead was aching and parch'd, and her breast
By a vague inexpressible sadness oppress'd:
A sadness which led her, she scarcely knew how,
And she scarcely knew why . . . (save, indeed, that just now
The house, out of which with a gasp she had fled
Half stifled, seem'd ready to sink on her head) . . .
|
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: ignorance, and cheers him with a dose of vicious and revolting
dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of LIBERTY. We were
induced to drink, I among the rest, and when the holidays were
over, we all staggered up from our filth and wallowing, took a
long breath, and went away to our various fields of work;
feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go from that which our
masters artfully deceived us into the belief was freedom, back
again to the arms of slavery. It was not what we had taken it to
be, nor what it might have been, had it not been abused by us.
It was about as well to be a slave to _master_, as to be a slave
to _rum_ and _whisky._
My Bondage and My Freedom |
