| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: tormented brow. "But it's absolutely necessary that you
should."
At his tone her impatience flared up. "It's not necessary
that I should give you any explanation whatever, since
you've taken the matter out of my hands. All I can say is
that I was trying to help you: that no other thought ever
entered my mind." She paused a moment and then added: "If
you doubted it, you were right to do what you've done."
"Oh, I never doubted YOU!" he retorted, with a fugitive
stress on the pronoun. His face had cleared to its old look
of trust. "Don't be offended if I've seemed to," he went
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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 Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: go on and clean up the country. You can do it. Poison and hounds
are the SURE methods of finding any lion there may be about; and
AFTER THE FIRST FEW, one is about as justifiable as the other. If
you want the undoubtedly great joy of cross country pursuit, send
your hounds in after less noble game.
The third safe method of killing a lion is nocturnal. You lay out
a kill beneath a tree, and climb the tree. Or better, you hitch
out a pig or donkey as live bait. When the lion comes to this
free lunch, you try to see him; and, if you succeed in that, you
try to shoot him. It is not easy to shoot at night; nor is it
easy to see in the dark. Furthermore, lions only occasionally
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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 The Human Drift by Jack London: boulevards, through the splendid redwoods and homes of Mill
Valley, across the blossomed hills of Marin County, along the
knoll-studded picturesque marshes, past San Rafael resting warmly
among her hills, over the divide and up the Petaluma Valley, and
on to the grassy feet of Sonoma Mountain and home. We covered
fifty-five miles that day. Not so bad, eh, for Prince the Rogue,
the paint-removing Outlaw, the thin-shanked thoroughbred, and the
rabbit-jumper? And they came in cool and dry, ready for their
mangers and the straw.
Oh, we didn't stop. We considered we were just starting, and that
was many weeks ago. We have kept on going over six counties which
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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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: bigger boys; and from Miss Lucretia I got bread, by singing when
I was hungry, and sympathy when I was abused by that termagant,
who had the reins of government in the kitchen. For such
friendship I felt deeply grateful, and bitter as are my
recollections of slavery, I love to recall any instances of
kindness, any sunbeams of humane treatment, which found way to my
soul through the iron grating of my house of bondage. Such beams
seem all the brighter from the general darkness into which they
penetrate, and the impression they make is vividly distinct and
beautiful.
As I have before intimated, I was seldom whipped--and never
My Bondage and My Freedom |
