| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: sudden! Bless my wits, what is the matter with me?"
"The wonder is," said the other, "that his pipe, which was out
only an instant ago, should be all alight again, and with the
reddest coal I ever saw. There is something mysterious about this
stranger. What a whiff of smoke was that! Dim and faded did you
call him? Why, as he turns about the star on his breast is all
ablaze."
"It is, indeed," said his companion; "and it will go near to
dazzle pretty Polly Gookin, whom I see peeping at it out of the
chamber window."
The door being now opened, Feathertop turned to the crowd, made a
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: patience. Then, with a long straw, which enables me to conceal
myself slightly, I set the dead insect trembling.
That is quite enough. The Banded Epeira and the Silky Epeira
hasten to the central floor; the others come down from the branch;
all go to the Locust, swathe him with tape, treat him, in short, as
they would treat a live prey captured under normal conditions. It
took the shaking of the web to decide them to attack.
Perhaps the grey colour of the Locust is not sufficiently
conspicuous to attract attention by itself. Then let us try red,
the brightest colour to our retina and probably also to the
Spiders'. None of the game hunted by the Epeirae being clad in
The Life of the Spider |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: A fight in the first chapter made a book interesting to me when
I was a boy. I said to myself, "The man who writes several
chapters before the fighting begins is like the man who sells
peanuts in which a lot of the shells haven't any goodies." I made
up my mind then that if I ever wrote a book I would have a fight
in the first chapter.
So I will tell right here how I whipped the town bully in
Sharon, Pennsylvania. I'll call him Babe Durgon. I've forgotten
his real name, and it might be better not to mention it anyhow.
For though I whipped him thirty years ago, he might come back now
in a return match and reverse the verdict, so that my first
|
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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: cognizant of my previous intention to publish some writings, might have
imagined that the reasons which induced me to refrain from so doing, were
less to my credit than they really are; for although I am not immoderately
desirous of glory, or even, if I may venture so to say, although I am
averse from it in so far as I deem it hostile to repose which I hold in
greater account than aught else, yet, at the same time, I have never
sought to conceal my actions as if they were crimes, nor made use of many
precautions that I might remain unknown; and this partly because I should
have thought such a course of conduct a wrong against myself, and partly
because it would have occasioned me some sort of uneasiness which would
again have been contrary to the perfect mental tranquillity which I court.
Reason Discourse |
