| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: when finished. Periwinkle is very much grown, and is expected
to shut up her baby house and throw away her doll in a month or
two more. Sweet Fern has learned to read and write, and has put
on a jacket and pair of pantaloons--all of which improvements I
am sorry for. Squash Blossom, Blue Eye, Plantain, and Buttercup
have had the scarlet fever, but came easily through it.
Huckleberry, Milkweed, and Dandelion were attacked with the
whooping cough, but bore it bravely, and kept out of doors
whenever the sun shone. Cowslip, during the autumn, had either
the measles, or some eruption that looked very much like it,
but was hardly sick a day. Poor Clover has been a good deal
Tanglewood Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: to a more or less extent impervious to heat.
Many different formulas have been discovered
which accomplish the purpose, but the principle
remains unchanged. The formula set
down by Albertus Magnus was probably the
first ever made public: the following translation
of it is from the London Mirror:
Take juice of marshmallow, and white
of egg, flea-bane seeds, and lime; powder
them and mix juice of radish with the
white of egg; mix all thoroughly and with
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: several times arrested by a tender sound in the bush of voices
talking, soft as flutes and with quiet intonations. Hope told a
flattering tale; I put aside the leaves; and behold! in place of
the expected dryads, a pair of all too solid ladies squatting over
a clay pipe in the ungraceful RIDI. The beauty of the voice and
the eye was all that remained to those vast dames; but that of the
voice was indeed exquisite. It is strange I should have never
heard a more winning sound of speech, yet the dialect should be one
remarkable for violent, ugly, and outlandish vocables; so that
Tembinok' himself declared it made him weary, and professed to find
repose in talking English.
|
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 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: in London, and eager as she had long been to quit it,
could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu to
the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed
those hopes, and that confidence, in Willoughby,
which were now extinguished for ever, without great pain.
Nor could she leave the place in which Willoughby remained,
busy in new engagements, and new schemes, in which SHE
could have no share, without shedding many tears.
Elinor's satisfaction, at the moment of removal,
was more positive. She had no such object for her lingering
thoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whom
Sense and Sensibility |
