| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: slave by the name of Eli; the latter having been hired for this
occasion. The work was simple, and required strength and
activity, rather than any skill or intelligence, and yet, to one
entirely unused to such work, it came very hard. The heat was
intense and overpowering, and there was much hurry to get the
wheat, trodden out that day, through the fan; since, if that work
was done an hour before sundown, the hands would have, according
to a promise of Covey, that hour added to their night's rest. I
was not behind any of them in the wish to complete the day's work
before sundown, and, hence, I struggled with all my might to get
the work forward. The promise of one hour's repose on a week
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: until he had shut and locked the door behind him.
D'Artagnan was still in deep thought when some one touched
him on the shoulder. He turned and was about to utter an
exclamation of surprise when the other made to him a sign of
silence.
"You here, Rochefort?" he said, in a low voice.
"Hush!" returned Rochefort. "Did you know that I am at
liberty?"
"I knew it from the fountain-head -- from Planchet. And what
brought you here?"
"I came to thank God for my happy deliverance," said
Twenty Years After |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: Let the state then assign to each of these ten tribes an equal number
of slaves, and let the tribes agree to associate their fortunes and
proceed to open new cuttings. What will happen? Any single tribe
hitting upon a productive lode will be the means of discovering what
is advantageous to all. Or, supposing two or three, or possibly the
half of them, hit upon a lode, clearly these several operations will
proportionally be more remunerative still. That the whole ten will
fail is not at all in accordance with what we should expect from the
history of the past. It is possible, of course, for private persons to
combine in the same way,[35] and share their fortunes and minimise
their risks. Nor need you apprehend, sirs, that a state mining
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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 The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: the roof, scrawled MRS. STUBBS'S, was like a little card stuck rakishly in
the hat crown.
On the veranda there hung a long string of bathing-dresses, clinging
together as though they'd just been rescued from the sea rather than
waiting to go in, and beside them there hung a cluster of sandshoes so
extraordinarily mixed that to get at one pair you had to tear apart and
forcibly separate at least fifty. Even then it was the rarest thing to
find the left that belonged to the right. So many people had lost patience
and gone off with one shoe that fitted and one that was a little too
big...Mrs. Stubbs prided herself on keeping something of everything. The
two windows, arranged in the form of precarious pyramids, were crammed so
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