| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: "I think I must have come down here to think,"
Says he to that, and pulls his little beard;
"Your fly will serve as well as anybody,
And what's his hour? He flies, and flies, and flies,
And in his fly's mind has a brave appearance;
And then your spider gets him in her net,
And eats him out, and hangs him up to dry.
That's Nature, the kind mother of us all.
And then your slattern housemaid swings her broom,
And where's your spider? And that's Nature, also.
It's Nature, and it's Nothing. It's all Nothing.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: me if there is one in the long catalogue of sins that might not
there find a plea of justification.' He bore these sallies
patiently, and carried his forbearance almost too far: but when
he saw my funds increase, and that I had not only returned him
the hundred and seventy crowns, but having hired a new house and
trebled my expenses, I had plunged deeper than ever into a life
of pleasure, he changed his tone and manner towards me. He
lamented my obduracy. He warned me against the chastisement of
the Divine wrath, and predicted some of the miseries with which
indeed I was shortly afterwards visited. `It is impossible,' he
said, `that the money which now serves to support your
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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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: that Mother Ann had been compelled to sear his heart of flesh
with a red-hot iron before it could be purified from earthly
passions.
However that might be, poor Martha had a woman's heart, and a
tender one, and it quailed within her, as she looked round at
those strange old men, and from them to the calm features of Adam
Colburn. But perceiving that the elders eyed her doubtfully, she
gasped for breath, and again spoke.
"With what strength is left me by my many troubles," said she, "I
am ready to undertake this charge, and to do my best in it."
"My children, join your hands," said Father Ephraim.
Twice Told Tales |
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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: offered.
Here are some of the cases which have to be decided on. Some one fails
to fit out a ship: judgement must be given. Another puts up a building
on a piece of public land: again judgement must be given. Or, to take
another class of cases: adjudication has to be made between the
choragi for the Dionysia, the Thargelia, the Panathenaea, year after
year. [[7] And again in behalf of the gymnasiarchs a similar
adjudication for the Panathenaea, the Prometheia, and the Hephaestia,
also year after year.] Also as between the trierarchs, four hundred of
whom are appointed each year, of these, too, any who choose must have
their cases adjudicated on, year after year. But that is not all.
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