| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: song of consuls.
CAPTAIN BRANDEIS. The new actor was Brandeis, a Bavarian captain
of artillery, of a romantic and adventurous character. He had
served with credit in war; but soon wearied of garrison life,
resigned his battery, came to the States, found employment as a
civil engineer, visited Cuba, took a sub-contract on the Panama
canal, caught the fever, and came (for the sake of the sea voyage)
to Australia. He had that natural love for the tropics which lies
so often latent in persons of a northern birth; difficulty and
danger attracted him; and when he was picked out for secret duty,
to be the hand of Germany in Samoa, there is no doubt but he
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: communed aloud; "and if ever I get the hankering for country
life, it's me for this every time."
The old wood-road led him to a clearing, where a dozen acres of
grapes grew on wine-red soil. A cow-path, more trees and
thickets, and he dropped down a hillside to the southeast
exposure. Here, poised above a big forested canon, and looking
out upon Sonoma Valley, was a small farm-house. With its barn
and outhouses it snuggled into a nook in the hillside, which
protected it from west and north. It was the erosion from this
hillside, he judged, that had formed the little level stretch of
vegetable garden. The soil was fat and black, and there was
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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 The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: my correspondence, paid bills until I had writer's cramp from
signing checks, read over my will, and paid up my life insurance,
made to the benefit of an elderly sister of my mother's. I no
longer dreaded arrest. After that morning in the station, I felt
that anything would be a relief from the tension. I went home
with perfect openness, courting the warrant that I knew was waiting,
but I was not molested. The delay puzzled me. The early part
of the evening was uneventful. I read until late, with occasional
lapses, when my book lay at my elbow, and I smoked and thought.
Mrs. Klopton closed the house with ostentatious caution, about
eleven, and hung around waiting to enlarge on the outrageousness
The Man in Lower Ten |
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 Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
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