| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: Go anywhere you like, boy."
"Thank you, Mas'r," said Tom.
"And mind yourself," said the trader, "and don't come it over
your master with any o' yer nigger tricks; for I'll take every
cent out of him, if you an't thar. If he'd hear to me, he wouldn't
trust any on ye--slippery as eels!"
"Mas'r," said Tom,--and he stood very straight,--"I was jist
eight years old when ole Missis put you into my arms, and you
wasn't a year old. `Thar,' says she, `Tom, that's to be _your_
young Mas'r; take good care on him,' says she. And now I jist ask
you, Mas'r, have I ever broke word to you, or gone contrary to you,
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: by those wretched, cadaverous, idiotic creatures to whom the English
merchants sell every year the miserable drug called opium,
to the amount of one million four hundred thousand pounds--
thousands devoted to one of the most despicable vices
which afflict humanity! The Chinese government has in vain
attempted to deal with the evil by stringent laws. It passed
gradually from the rich, to whom it was at first exclusively reserved,
to the lower classes, and then its ravages could not be arrested.
Opium is smoked everywhere, at all times, by men and women,
in the Celestial Empire; and, once accustomed to it, the victims
cannot dispense with it, except by suffering horrible bodily contortions
Around the World in 80 Days |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Stone Face had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment
which was expressed in it would enlarge the young man's heart,
and fill it with wider and deeper sympathies than other hearts.
They knew not that thence would come a better wisdom than could
be learned from books, and a better life than could be moulded on
the defaced example of other human lives. Neither did Ernest know
that the thoughts and affections which came to him so naturally,
in the fields and at the fireside, and wherever he communed with
himself, were of a higher tone than those which all men shared
with him. A simple soul,--simple as when his mother first taught
him the old prophecy,--he beheld the marvellous features beaming
The Snow Image |
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 Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: Do not depend upon me, madame, for the next meeting. Since
my convalescence I have so many affairs of this kind on my
hands that I am forced to regulate them a little. When your
turn comes, I shall have the honor to inform you of it. I
kiss your hands.
Comte de Wardes
Not a word about the sapphire. Was the Gascon determined to
keep it as a weapon against Milady, or else, let us be
frank, did he not reserve the sapphire as a last resource
for his outfit? It would be wrong to judge the actions of
one period from the point of view of another. That which
The Three Musketeers |
