| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: Of wild echoes reluctantly rise from their hoar
Immemorial ambush, and roll in the wake
Of the cloud, whose reflection leaves vivid the lake.
And the wind, that wild robber, for plunder descends
From invisible lands, o'er those black mountain ends;
He howls as he hounds down his prey; and his lash
Tears the hair of the timorous wan mountain-ash,
That clings to the rocks, with her garments all torn,
Like a woman in fear; then he blows his hoarse horn
And is off, the fierce guide of destruction and terror,
Up the desolate heights, 'mid an intricate error
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: Out of his pocket, as he leaned against t' bricks. Hur knows?"
She thrust it into his hand, and then, her errand done, began to
gather chips together to make a fire, choking down hysteric
sobs.
"Has it come to this?"
That was all he said. The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest. The
roll was a small green pocket-book containing one or two gold
pieces, and a check for an incredible amount, as it seemed to
the poor puddler. He laid it down, hiding his face again in his
hands.
"Hugh, don't be angry wud me! It's only poor Deb,--hur knows?"
Life in the Iron-Mills |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: sects and heresies, compact, but still bulky, to which the curious
may go. There are ten thousand different expositions of orthodoxy.
No one who really seeks God thinks of the Trinity, either the
Trinity of the Trinitarian or the Trinity of the Sabellian or the
Trinity of the Arian, any more than one thinks of those theories
made stone, those gods with three heads and seven hands, who sit on
lotus leaves and flourish lingams and what not, in the temples of
India. Let us leave, therefore, these morbid elaborations of the
human intelligence to drift to limbo, and come rather to the natural
heresies that spring from fundamental weaknesses of the human
character, and which are common to all religions. Against these it
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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 Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: seen driving so slowly that they might almost be photographed
without halting, and where their occupants already wear the
dismal expression which befits that process. In these fine
vehicles, following each other in an endless file, one sees
such faces as used to be exhibited in ball-rooms during the
performance of quadrilles, before round dances came in,--faces
marked by the renunciation of all human joy. Sometimes a faint
suspicion suggests itself on the Avenue, that these torpid
countenances might be roused to life, in case some horse should
run away. But that one chance never occurs; the riders may not
yet be toned down into perfect breeding, but the horses are. I
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