| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: fur her to judge him out yonder. Yoh've yer father's Stephen,
'times. Hungry, pitiful, like women's. His got desper't' 't th'
last. Drunk hard,--died of 't, yoh know. But SHE killed
him,--th' sin was writ down fur her. Never was a boy I loved
like him, when we was boys."
There was a short silence.
"Yoh're like yer mother," said Polston, striving for a lighter
tone. "Here,"--motioning to the heavy iron jaws. "She
never--let go. Somehow, too, she'd the law on her side in
outward showin', an' th' right. But I hated religion, knowin'
her. Well, ther' 's a day of makin' things clear, comin'."
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Ah! shall I ever in aftertime behold
My native bounds- see many a harvest hence
With ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot
Where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair,
Some brutal soldier will possess these fields
An alien master. Ah! to what a pass
Has civil discord brought our hapless folk!
For such as these, then, were our furrows sown!
Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears, now set
Your vines in order! Go, once happy flock,
My she-goats, go. Never again shall I,
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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 Mayflower Compact: In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten,
the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereigne Lord, King James,
by the Grace of God, of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland,
King, Defender of the Faith, &c.
Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of
the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country,
a Voyage to plant the first colony in the Northerne Parts
of Virginia; doe, by these Presents, solemnly and mutually
in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and
combine ourselves together into a civill Body Politick,
for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: Napoleon. A whole people, that imagines it has imparted to itself
accelerated powers of motion through a revolution, suddenly finds itself
transferred back to a dead epoch, and, lest there be any mistake
possible on this head, the old dates turn up again; the old calendars;
the old names; the old edicts, which long since had sunk to the level of
the antiquarian's learning; even the old bailiffs, who had long seemed
mouldering with decay. The nation takes on the appearance of that crazy
Englishman in Bedlam, who imagines he is living in the days of the
Pharaohs, and daily laments the hard work that he must do in the
Ethiopian mines as gold digger, immured in a subterranean prison, with a
dim lamp fastened on his head, behind him the slave overseer with a long
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