| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: `There ain't a lawyer in Black Hawk could make a speech
like that. I just stopped your grandpa and said so to him.
He won't tell you, but he told us he was awful surprised himself,
didn't he, girls?'
Lena sidled up to me and said teasingly, `What made you so solemn?
I thought you were scared. I was sure you'd forget.'
Anna spoke wistfully.
`It must make you very happy, Jim, to have fine thoughts like that
in your mind all the time, and to have words to put them in.
I always wanted to go to school, you know.'
`Oh, I just sat there and wished my papa could hear you! Jim'--Antonia took
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: whose life, compared with yours, is one long malaise of body, and
soul, and spirit--and do as you would be done by; instead of
reproving and fault-finding, encourage. In God's name, encourage.
They scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thornbrakes,
clumsily enough, and have many a fall, poor things! But why, in
the name of a God of love and justice, is the lady, rolling along
the smooth turnpike-road in her comfortable carriage, to be
calling out all day long to the poor soul who drags on beside her
over hedge and ditch, moss and moor, bare-footed and weary-
hearted, with half-a-dozen children at her back: "You ought not
to have fallen here; and it was very cowardly to lie down there;
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: himself by a too serious belief in the sun of Austerlitz. Honest
Alsacien as he was, he did not suspend payment, nor did he give his
creditors shares in doubtful concerns by way of settlement. He paid
everything over the counter, and retired from business, thoroughly
deserving Nucingen's comment on his behavior--'Honest but stoobid.'
"All claims satisfied, there remained to him five hundred thousand
francs and certain receipts for sums advanced to that Imperial
Government, which had ceased to exist. 'See vat komms of too much
pelief in Nappolion,' said he, when he had realized all his capital.
"When you have been one of the leading men in a place, how are you to
remain in it when your estate has dwindled? D'Aldrigger, like all
|
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 Anabasis by Xenophon: return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
there is doubt about some of these) is:
Work Number of books
The Anabasis 7
The Hellenica 7
The Cyropaedia 8
Anabasis |
