| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: "You want to go to the Palace Hotel?" said an affable youth on a
dray. "What in hell are you doing here, then? This is about the
lowest ward in the city. Go six blocks north to corner of Geary
and Markey, then walk around till you strike corner of Gutter and
Sixteenth, and that brings you there."
I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of these directions,
quoting but from a disordered memory.
"Amen," I said. "But who am I that I should strike the corners
of such as you name? Peradventure they be gentlemen of repute,
and might hit back. Bring it down to dots, my son."
I thought he would have smitten me, but he didn't. He explained
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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 Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Meanwhile, you might seem to be listening:
If you forget yourself and go to sleep,
My treasure, I shall not say this again.
Look up once more into my poor old face,
Where you see beauty, or the Lord knows what,
And say to me aloud what else there is
Than ruins in it that you most admire.
No, there was never anything like that;
Nature has never fastened such a mask
Of radiant and impenetrable merit
On any woman as you say there is
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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 Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: God and the angels,--lighting the world other than the sun had
done for six thousand years. I have no name for the light: it
has a name,--yonder. Not many eyes were clear to see
its--shining that day; and if they did, it was as through a
glass, darkly. Yet it belonged to us also, in the old time, the
time when men could "hear the voice of the Lord God in the garden
in the cool of the day." It is God's light now alone.
Yet Lois caught faint glimpses, I think, sometimes, of its
heavenly clearness. I think it was this light that made the
burning of Christmas fires warmer for her than for others, that
showed her all the love and outspoken honesty and hearty frolic
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
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 Apology by Plato: fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonour, and not to avenge his
friend. 'Let me die forthwith,' he replies, 'and be avenged of my enemy,
rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a laughing-stock and a burden
of the earth.' Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever
a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he
has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of
danger; he should not think of death or of anything but of disgrace. And
this, O men of Athens, is a true saying.
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was
ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and
Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man,
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