| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think."
There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an
amused light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the
half-clothed figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of
their brawny muscles. He was a stranger in the city,--spending
a couple of months in the borders of a Slave State, to study the
institutions of the South,--a brother-in-law of Kirby's,--
Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,--hence his anatomical eye;
a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man who sucked
the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: wench, but this, I think, would weary the devil. I would
she might be burnt as my other wife was. If not, I must
run to the halter for help. O codpiece, thou hast done thy
master! this it is to be meddling with warm plackets.
[Exeunt.]
ACT III. SCENE IV. The camp of Locrine.
[Enter Locrine, Camber, Corineius, Thrasimachus,
Assarachus.]
LOCRINE.
Now am I guarded with an host of men,
Whose haughty courage is invincible:
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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 Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: that none but lovers would go out just before a thunder-storm.
Then you and Harry came in, and I knew it was the others."
"Aunt Jane," said Kate, "you divine everything: what a brain
you have!"
"Brain! it is nothing but a collection of shreds, like a little
girl's work-basket,--a scrap of blue silk and a bit of white
muslin."
"Now she is fishing for compliments," said Kate, "and she shall
have one. She was very sweet and good to Philip last night."
"I know it," said Aunt Jane, with a groan. "I waked in the
night and thought about it. I was awake a great deal last
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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 Intentions by Oscar Wilde: reduced to be the reporters of the police-court of literature, the
chroniclers of the doings of the habitual criminals of art. It is
sometimes said of them that they do not read all through the works
they are called upon to criticise. They do not. Or at least they
should not. If they did so, they would become confirmed
misanthropes, or if I may borrow a phrase from one of the pretty
Newnham graduates, confirmed womanthropes for the rest of their
lives. Nor is it necessary. To know the vintage and quality of a
wine one need not drink the whole cask. It must be perfectly easy
in half an hour to say whether a book is worth anything or worth
nothing. Ten minutes are really sufficient, if one has the
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