| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: swamping at their moorings.
The shore was thronged with men in oilskin clothes and by women
with shawls over their heads. Aunt Jane, who always felt
responsible for whatever went on in the elements, sat in-doors
with one lid closed, wincing at every flash, and watching the
universe with the air of a coachman guiding six wild horses.
Just after the storm had passed its height, two veritable wild
horses were reined up at the door, and Philip burst in, his
usual self-composure gone.
"Emilia is out sailing!" he exclaimed,--"alone with Lambert's
boatman, in this gale. They say she was bound for
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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 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts.
By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered
many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure
of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import,
I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language,
and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be
a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.
My time for these exercises and for reading was at night,
after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays,
when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much
as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
