| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: "Put that down! put that down!" shrieked the other boy. "You've struck
something. If we get Berkeley on the paper, I'll run that in." He
wrote rapidly, and then took a turn around the room, frowning as he
walked. "The actuality of a thing," said he, summing his clever
thoughts up, "is not disproved by its being inconceivable. Ideas alone
depend upon thought for their existence. There! Anybody can get off
stuff like that by the yard." He picked up a cork and a foot-rule,
tossed the cork, and sent it flying out of the window with the
foot-rule.
"Skip Berkeley," said the other boy.
"How much more is there?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: inveigh against the Court of Rome or to dispute at all about her.
For, seeing all remedies for her health to be desperate, I looked
on her with contempt, and, giving her a bill of divorcement, said
to her, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that
is filthy, let him be filthy still," giving myself up to the
peaceful and quiet study of sacred literature, that by this I
might be of use to the brethren living about me.
While I was making some advance in these studies, Satan opened
his eyes and goaded on his servant John Eccius, that notorious
adversary of Christ, by the unchecked lust for fame, to drag me
unexpectedly into the arena, trying to catch me in one little
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: request she greatly hoped he would never make of her. If he should
wish her for any reason to come in after dark she would just tell
him, if he "plased," that he must ask it of somebody else.
The fact that there was nothing to see didn't militate for the
worthy woman against what one MIGHT see, and she put it frankly to
Miss Staverton that no lady could be expected to like, could she?
"craping up to thim top storeys in the ayvil hours." The gas and
the electric light were off the house, and she fairly evoked a
gruesome vision of her march through the great grey rooms - so many
of them as there were too! - with her glimmering taper. Miss
Staverton met her honest glare with a smile and the profession that
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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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it
is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the
Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate
and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic
gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander
only heard the names.
Spring
The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a
pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even
in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not
the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new
Walden |
