| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: and weep while the receipt was operating?
TONY. Ecod! you had reason to weep, for you have been dosing me ever
since I was born. I have gone through every receipt in the Complete
Huswife ten times over; and you have thoughts of coursing me through
Quincy next spring. But, ecod! I tell you, I'll not be made a fool of
no longer.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Wasn't it all for your good, viper? Wasn't it all
for your good?
TONY. I wish you'd let me and my good alone, then. Snubbing this way
when I'm in spirits. If I'm to have any good, let it come of itself;
not to keep dinging it, dinging it into one so.
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Nor thou with public kindness honour me,
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:
But do not so, I love thee in such sort,
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.
XXXVII
As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
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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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: Seeds get lost, seedlings are not pricked out in time,
places already sown are planted with something else,
and there is confusion out of doors and despair in my heart.
But he was to have married the cook, and the cook saw a ghost
and immediately left, and he is going after her as soon as he can,
and meanwhile is wasting visibly away. What she saw was doors
that are locked opening with a great clatter all by themselves
on the hingeside, and then somebody invisible cursed at her.
These phenomena now go by the name of "the ghost."
She asked to be allowed to leave at once, as she had
never been in a place where there was a ghost before.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
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 Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: "Is this oath like theirs?"
They swear to hold no other dearer than Caesar: you, to hold
our true selves dearer than all else beside.
XXXVIII
"How shall my brother cease to be wroth with me?"
Bring him to me, and I will tell him. But to thee I have
nothing to say about his anger.
XXXIX
When one took counsel of Epictetus, saying, "What I seek is
this, how even though my brother be not reconciled to me, I may
still remain as Nature would have me to be," he replied: "All
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
