| 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: of these men must be always in the stable, to answer every call
from the great house. Over the way from the stable, is a house
built expressly for the hounds--a pack of twenty-five or thirty--
whose fare would have made glad the heart of a dozen slaves.
Horses and hounds are not the only consumers of the slave's toil.
There was practiced, at the Lloyd's, a hospitality which would
have <86>astonished and charmed any health-seeking northern
divine or merchant, who might have chanced to share it. Viewed
from his own table, and _not_ from the field, the colonel was a
model of generous hospitality. His house was, literally, a
hotel, for weeks during the summer months. At these times,
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 Gorgias by Plato: Socrates concludes by finally asking, to which of the two modes of serving
the state Callicles invites him:--'to the inferior and ministerial one,' is
the ingenuous reply. That is the only way of avoiding death, replies
Socrates; and he has heard often enough, and would rather not hear again,
that the bad man will kill the good. But he thinks that such a fate is
very likely reserved for him, because he remarks that he is the only person
who teaches the true art of politics. And very probably, as in the case
which he described to Polus, he may be the physician who is tried by a jury
of children. He cannot say that he has procured the citizens any pleasure,
and if any one charges him with perplexing them, or with reviling their
elders, he will not be able to make them understand that he has only been
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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 At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "You say we're back at the surface, David? How can
that be? How long have I been unconscious?"
"Not long. We turned in the ice stratum.
Don't you recall the sudden whirling of our seats?
After that the drill was above you instead of below.
We didn't notice it at the time; but I recall it now."
"You mean to say that we turned back in the ice stratum,
David? That is not possible. The prospector cannot turn
unless its nose is deflected from the outside--by some
external force or resistance--the steering wheel within
would have moved in response. The steering wheel has
At the Earth's Core |
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 Glasses by Henry James: asking myself how effectively this privilege had supposed itself to
prepare him for the career on which my friend appeared now to have
embarked. I remember too making up my mind about the cleverness,
which had its uses and I suppose in impenetrable shades even its
critics, but from which the friction of mere personal intercourse
was not the sort of process to extract a revealing spark. He
accepted without a question both his fever and his chill, and the
only thing he touched with judgment was this convenience of my
friendship. He doubtless told me his simple story, but the matter
comes back in a kind of sense of my being rather the mouthpiece, of
my having had to put it together for him. He took it from me in
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