| 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: lives of condemned soldiers tells us that "during the first year
of the administration the house was made lively by the games and
pranks of Mr. Lincoln's two younger children, William and Thomas.
Robert the eldest was away at Harvard, only coming home for short
vacations. The two little boys, aged eight and ten, with their
western independence and enterprise, kept the house in an uproar.
They drove their tutor wild with their good-natured disobedience.
They organized a minstrel show in the attic; they made
acquaintance with the office-seekers and became the hot champions
of the distressed. William was, with all his boyish frolic, a
child of great promise, capable of close application and study.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: From the age of nine till she was sixteen, Francesca, under the
direction of a Cardinal of the family, had read all through the
library of the Colonnas, to make weight against her ardent imagination
by studying science, art, and letters. But in these studies she
acquired the taste for independence and liberal ideas, which threw
her, with her husband, into the ranks of the revolution. Rodolphe had
not yet learned that, besides five living languages, Francesca knew
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. The charming creature perfectly understood
that, for a woman, the first condition of being learned is to keep it
deeply hidden.
Rodolphe spent the whole winter at Geneva. This winter passed like a
Albert Savarus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: Paquita, clad in a white wrapper, her feet bare, orange blossoms in
her black hair, appeared to Henri, knelt before him, adoring him as
the god of this temple, whither he had deigned to come. Although De
Marsay was accustomed to seeing the utmost efforts of Parisian luxury,
he was surprised at the aspect of this shell, like that from which
Venus rose out of the sea. Whether from an effect of contrast between
the darkness from which he issued and the light which bathed his soul,
whether from a comparison which he swiftly made between this scene and
that of their first interview, he experienced one of those delicate
sensations which true poetry gives. Perceiving in the midst of this
retreat, which had been opened to him as by a fairy's magic wand, the
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
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 Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces;
but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both
could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because
of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe
to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due
Second Inaugural Address |
