| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: new ventures, all the hardships they had themselves endured in
subduing the wilderness. At last, on March 1, 1830, when Abraham
was just twenty-one years old, the Lincolns, yielding to this
overmastering frontier impulse to "move" westward, left the old
farm in Indiana to make a new home in Illinois. "Their mode of
conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams," Mr. Lincoln wrote in
1860; "and Abraham drove one of the teams." They settled in Macon
County on the north side of the Sangamon River, about ten miles
west of Decatur, where they built a cabin, made enough rails to
fence ten acres of ground, fenced and cultivated the ground, and
raised a crop of corn upon it that first season. It was the same
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: lovely as the real Necile; but, considering the material of which it
was made, Claus thought it was very beautiful.
When Bessie, riding upon her white palfrey, came to his dwelling next
day, Claus presented her with the new toy. The little girl's eyes
were brighter than ever as she examined the pretty image, and she
loved it at once, and held it close to her breast, as a mother does to
her child.
"What is it called, Claus?" she asked.
Now Claus knew that Nymphs do not like to be spoken of by mortals, so
he could not tell Bessie it was an image of Necile he had given her.
But as it was a new toy he searched his mind for a new name to call it
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Nodded on the distant margins.
But when Hiawatha saw him
Slowly rising through the water,
Lifting up his disk refulgent,
Loud he shouted in derision,
"Esa! esa! shame upon you!
You are Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
You are not the fish I wanted,
You are not the King of Fishes!"
Slowly downward, wavering, gleaming,
Sank the Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
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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 Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: however, since there were no people between us and our sinister
source of supplies. The walk was a trifle long, but we could haul
our silent specimens undisturbed.
Our practice was surprisingly
large from the very first -- large enough to please most young
doctors, and large enough to prove a bore and a burden to students
whose real interest lay elsewhere. The mill-hands were of somewhat
turbulent inclinations; and besides their many natural needs,
their frequent clashes and stabbing affrays gave us plenty to
do. But what actually absorbed our minds was the secret laboratory
we had fitted up in the cellar -- the laboratory with the long
Herbert West: Reanimator |
