| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland: for a mother-in-law.
Another style of verses comes under the head of pure nonsense
rhymes. They are wholly without sense and I am not sure they are
good nonsense. They are popular, however, with the children, and
critics may say what they will, but the children are the last
court of appeal in case of nursery rhymes. Let me give one:
There's a cow on the mountain, the old saying goes,
On her legs are four feet, on her feet are eight toes.
Her tail is behind on the end of her back,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got
strength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven
knows. This was my curious labor all summer -- to make this portion
of the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil,
blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and
pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of
beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I
have an eye to them; and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad
leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water
this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for
the most part is lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days,
Walden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: "Gunpowder!" he exclaimed, laying hold of Caleb, who in vain
endeavoured to escape from him; "what
gunpowder? How any quantity of powder could be in Wolf's Crag
without my knowledge, I cannot possibly comprehend."
"But I can," interrupted the Marquis, whispering him, "I can
comprehend it thoroughly; for God's sake, ask him no more
questions at present."
"There it is, now," said Caleb, extricating himself from his
master, and adjusting his dress, "your honour will believe his
lordship's honourable testimony. His lordship minds weel how, in
the year that him they ca'd King Willie died----"
The Bride of Lammermoor |
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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: my citations, my sentences and paragraphs of personal confession,
from books that most of you at some time will have had already in
your hands, and yet this will be no detriment to the value of my
conclusions. It is true that some more adventurous reader and
investigator, lecturing here in future, may unearth from the
shelves of libraries documents that will make a more delectable
and curious entertainment to listen to than mine. Yet I doubt
whether he will necessarily, by his control of so much more
out-of-the-way material, get much closer to the essence of the
matter in hand.
The question, What are the religious propensities? and the
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