| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: of lovely trees, covered with a beautiful white foliage, upas trees
whose roots are embedded in the leather and destroy its texture.
Inside the book, damp encourages the growth of those ugly brown
spots which so often disfigure prints and "livres de luxe."
Especially it attacks books printed in the early part of this century,
when paper-makers had just discovered that they could bleach
their rags, and perfectly white paper, well pressed after printing,
had become the fashion. This paper from the inefficient means used
to neutralise the bleach, carried the seeds of decay in itself,
and when exposed to any damp soon became discoloured with brown stains.
Dr. Dibdin's extravagant bibliographical works are mostly so injured;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen,
perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the
insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed
no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause
of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself
Second Inaugural Address |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: proprietor of the Occidental, fell feet upward in the dust with one
farewell yelp. A Mexican who was crossing the street from the Blue
Front grocery carrying in his hand a bottle of kerosene, was
stimulated to a sudden and admirable burst of speed, still grasping
the neck of the shattered bottle. The new gilt weather-cock on Judge
Riley's lemon and ultramarine two-story residence shivered, flapped,
and hung by a splinter, the sport of the wanton breezes.
The artillery was in trim. Calliope's hand was steady. The high, calm
ecstasy of habitual battle was upon him, though slightly embittered by
the sadness of Alexander in that his conquests were limited to the
small world of Quicksand.
Heart of the West |
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 Faith of Men by Jack London: Hutchinson threw up his arm in an almost articulate groan.
He was several years younger than his partner, not more than
twenty-six, and there was a certain wistfulness in his face that
comes into the faces of men when they yearn vainly for the things
they have been long denied. This same wistfulness was in
Pentfield's face, and the groan of it was articulate in the heave
of his shoulders.
"I dreamed last night I was in Zinkand's," he said. "The music
playing, glasses clinking, voices humming, women laughing, and I
was ordering eggs--yes, sir, eggs, fried and boiled and poached and
scrambled, and in all sorts of ways, and downing them as fast as
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