| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: necessaries of life; if it be Your Highness's pleasure that we die
here, we entreat that we may at least be despatched quickly, and not
condemned to longer torments. The King, startled at this discourse,
denied that he had given any such orders, and was very importunate
to know the author of our intelligence, but finding me determined
not to discover him, he sent me away with a promise that for the
future we should be furnished with everything we wanted, and indeed
that same day we bought three goats for about a crown, and some
honey, and found ourselves better treated than before.
Chapter VII
They obtain leave, with some difficulty, to depart from Dancali.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: campaign against Richmond.
The President had many things to dishearten him at this time,
many troublesome questions to settle. For instance, there were
new loyal State governments to provide in those parts of the
South which had again come under control of the Union armies--no
easy matter, where every man, woman and child harbored angry
feelings against the North, and no matter how just and forbearing
he might be, his plans were sure to be thwarted and bitterly
opposed at every step.
There were serious questions, too, to be decided about negro
soldiers, for the South had raised a mighty outcry against the
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: almost rapt, which to Mrs Verloc, flying from the gallows, seemed
to be full of force and tenderness. This devotion deeply moved her
- and the adamantine face lost the stern rigidity of its terror.
Comrade Ossipon gazed at it as no lover ever gazed at his
mistress's face. Alexander Ossipon, anarchist, nicknamed the
Doctor, author of a medical (and improper) pamphlet, late lecturer
on the social aspects of hygiene to working men's clubs, was free
from the trammels of conventional morality - but he submitted to
the rule of science. He was scientific, and he gazed
scientifically at that woman, the sister of a degenerate, a
degenerate herself - of a murdering type. He gazed at her, and
The Secret Agent |
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 Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: would have to push that job aside and sink back into the abyss.
In reaching Elwood, I had tramped from Muncie, Indiana, to
Anderson, a long weary walk for one whose feet, like mine, were
not accustomed to it. From Anderson I tramped to Frankton, and
there I caught a freight and rode the bumpers to Elwood. The
train took me right into the mill. It was summer and the mill had
been shut down by the hard times. The boss was there looking over
the machinery. They were getting ready to start up. I faced him
and he said: "Do you want a job?"
"Yes," I said.
"What at? Greasing up to-night," he said. Weary and hungry as I
|
