| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: continental ports. Aren't you astonished, Elfride?'
'Oh no,' said Elfride, appearing amid the dingy scene like a
rainbow in a murky sky. 'It is a pleasant novelty, I think.'
'Where in the wide ocean is our steamer?' the vicar inquired. 'I
can see nothing but old hulks, for the life of me.'
'Just behind that one,' said Knight; 'we shall soon be round under
her.'
The object of their search was soon after disclosed to view--a
great lumbering form of inky blackness, which looked as if it had
never known the touch of a paint-brush for fifty years. It was
lying beside just such another, and the way on board was down a
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: address, and also as the parents did not know
what had become of their lost and dear little
ones, of course all traces of each other were gone.
The following facts are sufficient to prove, that
he who has the power, and is inhuman enough to
trample upon the sacred rights of the weak, cares
nothing for race or colour:--
In March, 1818, three ships arrived at New
Orleans, bringing several hundred German emi-
grants from the province of Alsace, on the lower
Rhine. Among them were Daniel Muller and his
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: carefully concealed the pains he took to avoid her. Nothing so
resembles the Divine love as hopeless human love. A man must have
great depth of heart to devote himself in silence and obscurity to a
woman. In such a heart is the worship of love for love's sake only--
sublime avarice, sublime because ever generous and founded on the
mysterious existence of the principles of creation. EFFECT is nature,
and nature is enchanting; it belongs to man, to the poet, the painter,
the lover. But CAUSE, to a few privileged souls and to certain mighty
thinkers, is superior to nature. Cause is God. In the sphere of causes
live the Newtons and all such thinkers as Laplace, Kepler, Descartes,
Malebranche, Spinoza, Buffon; also the true poets and solitarys of the
|
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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: of momentary happiness he gathered from his present position.
It separated Phoebe and himself from the world, and bound them
to each other, by their exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon's
mysterious death, and the counsel which they were forced to hold
respecting it. The secret, so long as it should continue such,
kept them within the circle of a spell, a solitude in the midst
of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an island in mid-ocean;
once divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt them, standing on its
widely sundered shores. Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their
situation seemed to draw them together; they were like two children
who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one another's side, through
House of Seven Gables |
