| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: commercial eagerness to excel in one.
In both these directions our sympathies are constipated. We
are apostles of our own caste and our own subject of study,
instead of being, as we should, true men and LOVING students.
Of course both of these could be corrected by the students
themselves; but this is nothing to the purpose: it is more
important to ask whether the Senatus or the body of alumni
could do nothing towards the growth of better feeling and
wider sentiments. Perhaps in another paper we may say
something upon this head.
One other word, however, before we have done. What shall we
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: by my former danger, as I used to be, and still pursuing the
art which I had so long been employed in, I ventured into a
house where I saw the doors open, and furnished myself, as
I though verily without being perceived, with two pieces of
flowered silks, such as they call brocaded silk, very rich. It
was not a mercer's shop, nor a warehouse of a mercer, but
looked like a private dwelling-house, and was, it seems,
inhabited by a man that sold goods for the weavers to the
mercers, like a broker or factor.
That I may make short of this black part of this story, I was
attacked by two wenches that came open-mouthed at me just
Moll Flanders |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: that is no stimulus to a trustee.'"
"Something in me had leaped when Mr. Beverly mentioned six per cent.
Again I thought of Ethel and October, and what a difference it would be
to begin our modest housekeeping on sixty instead of forty thousand
dollars a year, outside of what I was earning. Mr. Beverly now rang a
bell. 'You happen to have come,' said he, 'on a morning when I can really
do something for you out of the common. Bring me (it was a clerk he
addressed) one of those Petunia circulars. Now here you can see at a
glance for yourself.' He began reading the prospectus rapidly aloud to me
while I followed its paragraphs with my own eye. His strong,
well-polished thumb-nail ran heavily but speedily down the columns of
|
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 The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: in the fields and at the fireside, and wherever he communed with
himself, were of a higher tone than those which all men shared
with him. A simple soul,--simple as when his mother first taught
him the old prophecy,--he beheld the marvellous features beaming
adown the valley, and still wondered that their human counterpart
was so long in making his appearance.
By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the
oddest part of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the
body and spirit of his existence, had disappeared before his
death, leaving nothing of him but a living skeleton, covered over
with a wrinkled yellow skin. Since the melting away of his gold,
The Snow Image |
