| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the
number of Papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child
(in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths
of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags
included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten
shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have
said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he
hath only some particular friend, or his own family to dine with
him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow
popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: for in that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarly
acquainted with about all the different types of human nature
that are to be found in fiction, biography, or history.
The fact is daily borne in upon me, that the average shore-employment
requires as much as forty years to equip a man with this sort
of an education. When I say I am still profiting by this thing,
I do not mean that it has constituted me a judge of men--
no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not made.
My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of it
which I value most is the zest which that early experience has
given to my later reading. When I find a well-drawn character
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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 Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: an evil dream. The horse-cars were packed with the returning
throng, and they had to let a dozen go by before they could push
their way into one that was already crowded. Ann Eliza had never
before felt so tired. Even Miss Mellins's flow of narrative ran
dry, and they sat silent, wedged between a negro woman and a pock-
marked man with a bandaged head, while the car rumbled slowly down
a squalid avenue to their corner. Evelina and Mr. Ramy sat
together in the forward part of the car, and Ann Eliza could catch
only an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the
clock-maker's shiny coat-collar; but when the little party got out
at their corner the crowd swept them together again, and they
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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 Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: wanted to get through that jungle before the leopards left their
family circles. I hurled clods of earth and opprobrious shouts
and epithets in the four directions of my four obstreperous
friends, and I thought I counted four reluctant departures. Then,
with considerable doubt, I descended from my ant hill and hurried
down the slope, stumbling over grass hummocks, colliding with
bushes, tangling with vines, but progressing in a gratifyingly
rhinoless condition. Five minutes cautious but rapid feeling my
way brought me through the jungle. Shortly after I raised the
campfires; and so got home.
The next two days were repetitions, with slight variation, of
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