| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: room for hesitation: follow your bent. And observe (lest I should
too much discourage you) that the disposition does not usually burn
so brightly at the first, or rather not so constantly. Habit and
practice sharpen gifts; the necessity of toil grows less
disgusting, grows even welcome, in the course of years; a small
taste (if it be only genuine) waxes with indulgence into an
exclusive passion. Enough, just now, if you can look back over a
fair interval, and see that your chosen art has a little more than
held its own among the thronging interests of youth. Time will do
the rest, if devotion help it; and soon your every thought will be
engrossed in that beloved occupation.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: laid on the head of French society, to compress her brain and reduce her
to quiet; the sabre and the musket, periodically made to perform the
functions of judges and of administrators, of guardians and of censors,
of police officers and of watchmen; the military moustache and the
soldier's jacket, periodically heralded as the highest wisdom and
guiding stars of society;--were not all of these, the barrack and the
bivouac, the sabre and the musket, the moustache and the soldier's
jacket bound, in the end, to hit upon the idea that they might as well
save, society once for all, by proclaiming their own regime as supreme,
and relieve bourgeois society wholly of the care of ruling itself? The
barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and the musket, the moustache and the
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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 Summer by Edith Wharton: him.
"Well," he said, "is it settled?"
"Yes, it's settled. I ain't going."
"Not to the Nettleton school?"
"Not anywhere."
He cleared his throat and asked sternly: "Why?"
"I'd rather not," she said, swinging past him on her
way to her room. It was the following week that he
brought her up the Crimson Rambler and its fan from
Hepburn. He had never given her anything before.
The next outstanding incident of her life had happened
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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 The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: with your married clergy, see less of the effects of this
than celibates do, but even with you there is a great deal
in it. Why, the very institution of celibacy itself
was forced upon the early Christian Church by the scandal
of rich Roman ladies loading bishops and handsome priests
with fabulous gifts until the passion for currying favor
with women of wealth, and marrying them or wheedling
their fortunes from them, debauched the whole priesthood.
You should read your Jerome."
"I will--certainly," said the listener, resolving to
remember the name and refer it to the old bookseller.
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
