| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction
in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts
were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--
all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--
seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation.
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather
than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish. And the war came.
Second Inaugural Address |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: attained the unity which conveys one aspect, at least, of life. As it
is, you are true only on your middle plane. Your outlines are false;
they do not round upon themselves; they suggest nothing behind them.
There is truth here," said the old man, pointing to the bosom of the
saint; "and here," showing the spot where the shoulder ended against
the background; "but there," he added, returning to the throat, "it is
all false. Do not inquire into the why and wherefore. I should fill
you with despair."
The old man sat down on a stool and held his head in his hands for
some minutes in silence.
"Master," said Porbus at length, "I studied that throat from the nude;
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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 Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: Dawson's Landing was behind him; then he said to himself,
"All the detectives on earth couldn't trace me now; there's not a
vestige of a clue left in the world; that homicide will take its
place with the permanent mysteries, and people won't get done
trying to guess out the secret of it for fifty years."
In St. Louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in
the papers--dated at Dawson's Landing:
Judge Driscoll, an old and respected citizen,
was assassinated here about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman
or a barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent election.
The assassin will probably be lynched.
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: tells of his struggles to learn anatomy. How old Sylvius tried to
demonstrate the human frame from a bit of a dog, fumbling in vain
for muscles which he could not find, or which ought to have been
there, according to Galen, and were not; while young Vesalius, as
soon as the old pedant's back was turned, took his place, and, to
the delight of the students, found for him--provided it were there--
what he could not find himself;--how he went body-snatching and
gibbet-robbing, often at the danger of his life, as when he and his
friend were nearly torn to pieces by the cannibal dogs who haunted
the Butte de Montfaucon, or place of public execution;--how he
acquired, by a long and dangerous process, the only perfect skeleton
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