| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!' And I shall say:
'Your honor! am I a criminal or a heathen? My old woman is giving
up her soul to God, she is dying, and am I going to run from
tavern to tavern! What an idea, upon my word! Plague take them,
the taverns!' Then Pavel Ivanitch will order you to be taken into
the hospital, and I shall fall at his feet. . . . 'Pavel
Ivanitch! Your honor, we thank you most humbly! Forgive us fools
and anathemas, don't be hard on us peasants! We deserve a good
kicking, whi le you graciously put yourself out and mess your
feet in the snow!' And Pavel Ivanitch will give me a look as
though he would like to hit me, and will say: 'You'd much better
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: novelists or moralists praise as a virtue, a woman's coldness of
constitution, and want of passion; and make her yield to the ardour
of her lover out of sheer compassion, or to promote a frigid plan
of future comfort, I am disgusted. They may be good women, in the
ordinary acceptation of the phrase, and do no harm; but they appear
to me not to have those 'finely fashioned nerves,' which render
the senses exquisite. They may possess tenderness; but they want
that fire of the imagination, which produces _active_ sensibility,
and _positive_ _virtue_. How does the woman deserve to be
characterized, who marries one man, with a heart and imagination
devoted to another? Is she not an object of pity or contempt, when
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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 Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: send ye a bit venison, but ye wadna take it weel maybe, for
Killbuck catched it."
During this long speech, in which the good-natured Borderer
endeavoured to propitiate the offended Dwarf by every argument he
could think of, he heard him with his eyes bent on the ground, as
if in the deepest meditation, and at length broke forth--
"Nature?--yes! it is indeed in the usual beaten path of
Nature. The strong gripe and throttle the weak; the rich depress
and despoil the needy; the happy (those who are idiots enough to
think themselves happy) insult the misery and diminish the
consolation of the wretched.--Go hence, thou who hast contrived
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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 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: after ye've killed the body, there an't no more ye can do. And O,
there's all ETERNITY to come, after that!"
ETERNITY,--the word thrilled through the black man's soul with
light and power, as he spoke; it thrilled through the sinner's
soul, too, like the bite of a scorpion. Legree gnashed on him
with his teeth, but rage kept him silent; and Tom, like a man
disenthralled, spoke, in a clear and cheerful voice,
"Mas'r Legree, as ye bought me, I'll be a true and faithful
servant to ye. I'll give ye all the work of my hands, all my time,
all my strength; but my soul I won't give up to mortal man. I will
hold on to the Lord, and put his commands before all,--die or live;
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
