| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: yet not liking to ask for more than needs must, she scorned to
petition while people could any how be made to wait. But now,
should she be turned out of doors, she must expect nothing less
than to lose all her customers, and then she must beg or starve--
and what would become of her children?--'had Daniel not been pressed--
but God knows best--all this could not have happened.'
"I had two mattrasses on my bed; what did I want with two,
when such a worthy creature must lie on the ground? My mother would
be angry, but I could conceal it till my uncle came down;
and then I would tell him all the whole truth,
and if he absolved me, heaven would.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: assistance as the flies of their own household may be willing to
grant, frequently rival and sometimes surpass the older compositions,
in respect at least of punctuation, which is no small glory. Fully to
understand the important services that flies perform to literature it
is only necessary to lay a page of some popular novelist alongside a
saucer of cream-and-molasses in a sunny room and observe "how the wit
brightens and the style refines" in accurate proportion to the
duration of exposure.
FOLLY, n. That "gift and faculty divine" whose creative and
controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns
his life.
The Devil's Dictionary |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: elsewhere, and framed out of other elements, and was in existence before
entering the human body, why after having entered in and gone out again may
she not herself be destroyed and come to an end?
Very true, Simmias, said Cebes; about half of what was required has been
proven; to wit, that our souls existed before we were born:--that the soul
will exist after death as well as before birth is the other half of which
the proof is still wanting, and has to be supplied; when that is given the
demonstration will be complete.
But that proof, Simmias and Cebes, has been already given, said Socrates,
if you put the two arguments together--I mean this and the former one, in
which we admitted that everything living is born of the dead. For if the
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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 A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: us. Looked at quietly, this act of England's helped us and hurt herself,
for it deprived her of cotton.
It was not with this, but with the reception and treatment of Mr. Adams
that the true hostility began. Slights to him were slaps at us, sympathy
with the South was an active moral injury to our cause, even if it was
mostly an undertone, politically. Then all of a sudden, something that we
did ourselves changed the undertone to a loud overtone, and we just
grazed England's declaring war on us. Had she done so, then indeed it had
been all up with us. This incident is the comic going-back on our own
doctrine of 1812, to which I have alluded above.
On November 8, 1861, Captain Charles Wilkes of the American steam sloop
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