| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: "_Your_ status? -- devil seize you!"
"_Amica curiae,_" she replied --
"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "there's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
G.J.
LAWFUL, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.
LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
LAZINESS, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to
light lovers -- particularly to those who love not wisely but other
The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Disrooted, what I am is grafted here.
Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe
Within this vestal limit, and how should I,
Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt
Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.'
'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there,
I think no more of deadly lurks therein,
Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,
To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be,
If more and acted on, what follows? war;
Your own work marred: for this your Academe,
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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 Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: places, I say nothing of the buttings and boundings of this county.
It lies on the edge of the great level, called by the people here
the Fen Country; and great part, if not all, the Isle of Ely lies
in this county and Norfolk. The rest of Cambridgeshire is almost
wholly a corn country, and of that corn five parts in six of all
they sow is barley, which is generally sold to Ware and Royston,
and other great malting towns in Hertfordshire, and is the fund
from whence that vast quantity of malt, called Hertfordshire malt,
is made, which is esteemed the best in England. As Essex, Suffolk,
and Norfolk are taken up in manufactures, and famed for industry,
this county has no manufacture at all; nor are the poor, except the
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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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: 'So be it, son,' he answered with a sigh. 'Your mother's cruel
death maddened me and I said what I may live to be sorry for,
though at the best I shall not live long, for my heart is broken.
Perhaps I should have remembered that vengeance is in the hand of
the Lord, who wreaks it at His own time and without our help. Do
not think unkindly of me, my boy, if we should chance to meet no
more, for I love you, and it was but the deeper love that I bore to
your mother which made me deal harshly with you.'
'I know it, father, and bear no grudge. But if you think that you
owe me anything, pay it by holding back my brother from working
wrong to me and Lily Bozard while I am absent.'
Montezuma's Daughter |
