| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: and-thirty points of the whole compass can blow unto thee, as it
does to the rest of thy fellow-creatures, good?
As the notary was passing on by a dark passage, complaining in this
sort, a voice call'd out to a girl, to bid her run for the next
notary. - Now the notary being the next, and availing himself of
his situation, walk'd up the passage to the door, and passing
through an old sort of a saloon, was usher'd into a large chamber,
dismantled of everything but a long military pike, - a breastplate,
- a rusty old sword, and bandoleer, hung up, equidistant, in four
different places against the wall.
An old personage who had heretofore been a gentleman, and unless
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: systems in five closely packed volumes, printed by Germans, who little
suspect that the gist of the matter has been known in Paris since
1750, and crystallized in a few trenchant words--the diamonds of our
national thought. Blondet is driving a hearse to his own suicide;
Blondet, forsooth! who manufactures newspaper accounts of the last
words of all the great men that die without saying anything!"
"Come, get on," put in Finot.
"It was my intention to explain to you in what the happiness of a man
consists when he is not a shareholder (out of compliment to Couture).
Well, now, do you not see at what a price Godefroid secured the
greatest happiness of a young man's dreams? He was trying to
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: families of disobedience to it. For my own part, I should
not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the
State. But, if I deny the authority of the State when it
presents its tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my
property, and so harass me and my children without end.
This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live
honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward
respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate
property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or
squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that
soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
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 Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: The hours passed for her with the fierce rapidity that great
joy or anguish lends them. She went through the days with a
sternly smiling precision, but she hardly knew what was happening,
and when night-fall released her from the shop, and she could carry
her work to Evelina's bedside, the same sense of unreality
accompanied her, and she still seemed to be accomplishing a task
whose object had escaped her memory.
Once, when Evelina felt better, she expressed a desire to make
some artificial flowers, and Ann Eliza, deluded by this awakening
interest, got out the faded bundles of stems and petals and the
little tools and spools of wire. But after a few minutes the work
|
