| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain
it. Now, when there needs little more than to signify your acceptance,
why do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken
chair, as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard
of King Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred
will hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy.
Well! it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog,
woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef,
have vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes,
and gravies crusted over with cold fat. The Judge, had he done
nothing else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork.
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: days."
How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned from an
article in the Westminster Adult Bible Class:
"The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. She
chooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comes gets a
glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the group stands on the
doorstep and invites passers-by to come in."
Perhaps most of all Babbitt appreciated the remarks by William H. Ridgway in
the Sunday School Times:
"If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go in it,
that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that acts like a
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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 Glasses by Henry James: express a compassion without seeming to take for granted more
trouble than there actually might have been. I reflected that I
must really figure to her as a fool, which was an entertainment I
had never expected to give her. It rolled over me there for the
first time--it has come back to me since--that there is,
wondrously, in very deep and even in very foolish misfortune a
dignity still finer than in the most inveterate habit of being all
right. I couldn't have to her the manner of treating it as a mere
detail that I was face to face with a part of what, at our last
meeting, we had had such a scene about; but while I was trying to
think of some manner that I COULD have she said quite colourlessly,
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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 Poems by Bronte Sisters: But, within its parent's kindly bosom,
Flowed for ever Life's restoring tide.
Little mourned I for the parted gladness,
For the vacant nest and silent song--
Hope was there, and laughed me out of sadness;
Whispering, "Winter will not linger long!"
And, behold! with tenfold increase blessing,
Spring adorned the beauty-burdened spray;
Wind and rain and fervent heat, caressing,
Lavished glory on that second May!
High it rose--no winged grief could sweep it;
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