| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: and stood hesitating what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two
Quaker gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage,--
Friends William C. Taber and Joseph Ricketson,--who at once discerned
our true situation, and, in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me,
Mr. Taber said: "Thee get in." I never obeyed an order with more alacrity,
and we were soon on our way to our new home. When we reached "Stone Bridge"
the passengers alighted for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver.
We took no breakfast, and, when asked for our fares, I told the driver
I would make it right with him when we reached New Bedford.
I expected some objection to this on his part, but he made none.
When, however, we reached New Bedford, he took our baggage,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: conception of heaven includes a Holy Family, it does not attach to
that family the notion of a separate home, or a private nursery or
kitchen or mother-in-law, or anything that constitutes the family as
we know it. Even blood relationship is miraculously abstracted from
it; and the Father is the father of all children, the mother the
mother of all mothers and babies, and the Son the Son of Man and the
Savior of his brothers: one whose chief utterance on the subject of
the conventional family was an invitation to all of us to leave our
families and follow him, and to leave the dead to bury the dead, and
not debauch ourselves at that gloomy festival the family funeral, with
its sequel of hideous mourning and grief which is either affected or
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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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: fame, those of the highest or the lowest rank in her own world, they
all blanch before her. She has conquered the right to converse as long
and as often as she chooses with the men who seem to her agreeable,
without being entered on the tablets of gossip. Certain coquettish
women are capable of following a plan of this kind for seven years in
order to gratify their fancies later; but to suppose any such
reservations in the Marquise de Listomere would be to calumniate her.
I have had the happiness of knowing this phoenix. She talks well; I
know how to listen; consequently I please her, and I go to her
parties. That, in fact, was the object of my ambition.
Neither plain nor pretty, Madame de Listomere has white teeth, a
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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 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: of his own disposition, convince him that he was not capable
of being steadily attached to any one woman in the world,
and shame him from persisting any longer in addressing herself.
It was very strange! She had begun to think he really
loved her, and to fancy his affection for her something
more than common; and his sister still said that he cared
for nobody else. Yet there must have been some marked
display of attentions to her cousin, there must have
been some strong indiscretion, since her correspondent
was not of a sort to regard a slight one.
Very uncomfortable she was, and must continue, till she
Mansfield Park |
