| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: Chapter 4.XLVI.
I had escaped, continued the corporal, all that time from falling in love,
and had gone on to the end of the chapter, had it not been predestined
otherwise--there is no resisting our fate.
It was on a Sunday, in the afternoon, as I told your honour.
The old man and his wife had walked out--
Every thing was still and hush as midnight about the house--
There was not so much as a duck or a duckling about the yard--
--When the fair Beguine came in to see me.
My wound was then in a fair way of doing well--the inflammation had been
gone off for some time, but it was succeeded with an itching both above and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: Presbyterian Clergyman of New York, well known
in this country by his religious publications,
declared from the pulpit that, "if by one prayer he
could liberate every slave in the world he would not
dare to offer it."
The Rev. Dr. Joel Parker, of Philadelphia, in the
course of a discussion on the nature of Slavery,
says, "What, then, are the evils inseparable from
slavery? There is not one that is not equally
inseparable from depraved human nature in other
lawful relations."
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
