| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: in a low voice, as if he were studying it.
The long-legged veteran, who had been besieging the fire-iron,
as before related, now took down his cumbrous length, and rearing
aloft his tall form, walked up to the advertisement and very
deliberately spit a full discharge of tobacco-juice on it.
"There's my mind upon that!" said he, briefly, and sat down again.
"Why, now, stranger, what's that for?" said mine host.
"I'd do it all the same to the writer of that ar paper, if he was
here," said the long man, coolly resuming his old employment of
cutting tobacco. "Any man that owns a boy like that, and can't
find any better way o' treating on him, _deserves_ to lose him.
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood;
And sought a little stream, which well he knew,
For oftentimes with boyish careless shout
The green and crested grebe he would pursue,
Or snare in woven net the silver trout,
And down amid the startled reeds he lay
Panting in breathless sweet affright, and waited for the day.
On the green bank he lay, and let one hand
Dip in the cool dark eddies listlessly,
And soon the breath of morning came and fanned
His hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly
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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 The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: degenerate into monomania, I resolved to convoke a sanhedrim of sound
consciences, and obtain from them some light on this problem of high
morality and philosophy,--a problem which had been, as we shall see,
still further complicated since my return.
Two days ago, therefore, I collected those of my friends to whom I
attribute most delicacy, probity, and honor. I invited two Englishmen,
the secretary of an embassy, and a puritan; a former minister, now a
mature statesman; a priest, an old man; also my former guardian, a
simple-hearted being who rendered so loyal a guardianship account that
the memory of it is still green at the Palais; besides these, there
were present a judge, a lawyer, and a notary,--in short, all social
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: work; but if I were to be left to-morrow on Juan Fernandez, Hoppus's
is not the book that I should choose for my companion volume.
I tried to fight the point with Mackay. I made him own that he had
taken pleasure in reading books otherwise, to his view,
insignificant; but he was too wary to advance a step beyond the
admission. It was in vain for me to argue that here was pleasure
ready-made and running from the spring, whereas his ploughs and
butter-churns were but means and mechanisms to give men the necessary
food and leisure before they start upon the search for pleasure; he
jibbed and ran away from such conclusions. The thing was different,
he declared, and nothing was serviceable but what had to do with
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