| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: had no voice; her convulsive movements showed plainly that she lay, as
it were, between life and death. Bartolomeo roughly pushed her from
him.
"Go," he said. "The wife of Luigi Porta cannot be a Piombo. I have no
daughter. I have not the strength to curse you, but I cast you off;
you have no father. My Ginevra Piombo is buried here," he said, in a
deep voice, pressing violently on his heart. "Go, leave my house,
unhappy girl," he added, after a moment's silence. "Go, and never come
into my sight again."
So saying, he took Ginevra by the arm to the gate of the house and
silently put her out.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: called the hour.
"Stay here," said Billy to a sergeant at his side, "until you
hear a hoot owl cry three times from the direction of the
barracks and guardhouse, then charge the opposite end of the
town, firing off your carbines like hell an' yellin' yer heads off.
Make all the racket you can, an' keep it up 'til you get 'em
comin' in your direction, see? Then turn an' drop back slowly,
eggin' 'em on, but holdin' 'em to it as long as you can. Do
you get me, bo?"
From the mixture of Spanish and English and Granavenooish
the sergeant gleaned enough of the intent of his commander to
The Mucker |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: led by Stilicho the Vandal, and the Byzantine by Belisar the Sclav and
Narses the Persian, the end of all things was at hand, and came; as it
will come soon to Turkey.
But if Turkey deserves to fall, and must fall, it must not fall by our
treachery. Its sins will surely be avenged upon it: but wrong must not
avenge wrong, or the penalty is only passed on from one sinner to
another. Whatsoever element of good is left in the Turk, to that we
must appeal as our only means, if not of saving him, still of helping
him to a quiet euthanasia, and absorption into a worthier race of
successors. He is said (I know not how truly) to have one virtue left;
that of faithfulness to his word. Only by showing him that we too abhor
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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 Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: America for his sympathy with the slaveholder).
The Rev. W. M. Rogers, an orthodox minister
of Boston, delivered a sermon in which he
says, "When the slave asks me to stand be-
tween him and his master, what does he ask?
He asks me to murder a nation's life; and I
will not do it, because I have a conscience,--
because there is a God." He proceeds to affirm
that if resistance to the carrying out of the "Fugi-
tive Slave Law" should lead the magistracy to
call the citizens to arms, their duty was to obey
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
