| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: to be free--" He was impressed by this light way of
speaking of the formidable Catherine, and moved by
the thought of what must have given Madame Olenska
this thirst for even the loneliest kind of freedom. But
the idea of Beaufort gnawed him.
"I think I understand how you feel," he said. "Still,
your family can advise you; explain differences; show
you the way."
She lifted her thin black eyebrows. "Is New York
such a labyrinth? I thought it so straight up and down--
like Fifth Avenue. And with all the cross streets
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: pasian in a jest, sitting upon the stool; Ut puto deus
fio. Galba with a sentence; Feri, si ex re sit populi
Romani; holding forth his neck. Septimius Severus
in despatch; Adeste si quid mihi restat agendum.
And the like. Certainly the Stoics bestowed too
much cost upon death, and by their great prepara-
tions, made it appear more fearful. Better saith he,
qui finem vitae extremum inter munera ponat
naturae. It is as natural to die, as to be born; and to
a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful, as the
other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one
Essays of Francis Bacon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: for six or seven weeks beyond all that I have expressed, and came
even to such a height that, in the extremity, they began to break into
that excellent order of which I have spoken so much in behalf of the
magistrates; namely, that no dead bodies were seen in the street or
burials in the daytime: for there was a necessity in this extremity to
bear with its being otherwise for a little while.
One thing I cannot omit here, and indeed I thought it was extraordinary,
at least it seemed a remarkable hand of Divine justice: viz., that all
the predictors, astrologers, fortune-tellers, and what they called
cunning-men, conjurers, and the like: calculators of nativities
and dreamers of dream, and such people, were gone and vanished;
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: say, save to commemorate one more form of great little heroism--
the commonest, and yet the least remembered of all--namely, the
heroism of an average mother? Ah, when I think of that last broad
fact, I gather hope again for poor humanity; and this dark world
looks bright, this diseased world looks wholesome to me once more-
-because, whatever else it is or is not full of, it is at least
full of mothers.
While the satirist only sneers, as at a stock butt for his
ridicule, at the managing mother trying to get her daughters
married off her hands by chicaneries and meannesses, which every
novelist knows too well how to draw--would to heaven he, or
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