| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid
waste--sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to
mill--and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on.
They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial
season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of
the mind, cast by the WINGS of some thought in its vernal or
autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the
substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned
to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a
Shanghai and Cochin- China grandeur. Those GRA-A-ATE THOUGHTS,
those GRA-A-ATE men you hear of!
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: far more than I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland.
Sure am I that, if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile
with a view to my recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like him
of the "stalwart hand."
The reader may be surprised at the impressions I had in some way conceived
of the social and material condition of the people at the North.
I had no proper idea of the wealth, refinement, enterprise,
and high civilization of this section of the country.
My "Columbian Orator," almost my only book, had done nothing
to enlighten me concerning Northern society. I had been taught
that slavery was the bottom fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea,
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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 Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: Kuang Hsu. When a boy he very much preferred foreign
to Chinese toys, and so the eunuchs stocked the palace
nursery with all the most wonderful toys the ingenuity and
mechanical skill of Europe had produced. As he grew
older the toys became more complicated, being in the form
of gramophones, graphophones, telephones, phonographs,
electric lights, electric cars, cuckoo clocks, Swiss watches
and indeed all the great inventions of modern times. The
boy was t'ao ch'i, and the eunuchs say that if he were
thwarted in any of his undertakings, or denied anything he
very much desired, he would dash a Swiss watch, or anything
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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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: as the occularium, he could see, like a strange narrow picture,
the farther end of the lists, the spectators upon either side
moving and shifting with ceaseless restlessness, and in the
centre of all, his opponent, sitting with spear point directed
upward, erect, motionless as a statue of iron, the sunlight
gleaming and flashing upon his polished plates of steel, and the
trappings of his horse swaying and fluttering in the rushing of
the fresh breeze.
Upon that motionless figure his sight gradually centred with
every faculty of mind and soul. He knew the next moment the
signal would be given that was to bring him either glory or shame
Men of Iron |
